The Seattle Kraken are off to their best start ever

In the four-year history of the Seattle Kraken, they’ve had one good season.

Based on the way they’ve started the 2025-26 campaign, though, their banner 2022-23 season is about to have company. And this version of the Kraken is on pace – by just a little – to be even better than that squad that made it to the playoffs and won a series while it was at it.

NHL standings

Through 18 games, the Kraken are off to their best start ever. With a 9-4-5 record, Seattle is tied for second place in the Pacific Division with 23 points, just one back of the first-place Los Angeles Kings.

The Kraken have had a winning record at this point in the season just once before, which was when they were 9-5-3 (21 points in the standings) on Nov. 17, 2022.

Impressively, the Kraken have been hanging in there even without arguably their two best players. Top goaltender Joey Daccord has been out since suffering an upper-body injury on Nov. 5, and left wing Jared McCann, who has led the Kraken in points in every season in franchise history, has missed the past month with a lower-body injury.

Right wing Kaapo Kakko (lower body) joined them on IR on Saturday, as well.

Left wing Jaden Schwartz has stepped up, leading the team with 14 points, including seven goals that ties for the team lead. The 33 year old is also running a plus-8 after posting a negative plus/minus in each of the past four seasons.

There’s a noticeable balance for Seattle with five players having scored 12 points or more thus far, and nine with at least eight points.

In the net, Philipp Grubauer and Matt Murray have played well, which has been key with Daccord out of action. Grubauer and Murray have matching 2.21 goals against averages in five games this season, but there is a question mark at the position now as Murray exited Saturday’s 4-1 win over the San Jose Sharks with a lower-body injury.

All that being said, the Kraken have continued to be a defensive-minded team even in their first season under new head coach Lane Lambert – perhaps more so than is comfortable. They’re sixth in the NHL at 2.67 goals allowed per game, but are just 28th in the 32-team league at 2.72 goals scored per game. Seattle is 18th with an 18.9% conversion rate on the power play but 29th at 71.2% on the penalty kill.

For his part, Lambert is stressing that the Kraken need to find more success on offense to keep themselves in the playoff mix.

“We have great structure in our defensive zone, and we need to get better structure in our offensive zone,” Lambert said last week. “There is certainly things we can do. … We can’t defer to passing. We have to have a shoot-first mentality.”

Lambert also pointed to his team needing to be better at finding clear lanes for their shots.

“We’ve had about 187 shot attempts (over a three-game period) to be exact, and we’ve had over 100 of those blocked or missed the net,” Lambert said. “There’s your formula to having success. It’s to get more of those attempts on net.”

To their credit, the Kraken have been resilient. They’ve played eight overtime games, including four in a row at one point in October. So even though they’ve lost five of those games, the points are sure adding up in the standings.

The Kraken have been better on offense recently, scoring a combined nine goals in their back-to-back wins – both in regulation, which is worth noting – at home over Winnipeg on Thursday and San Jose on Saturday.

Seattle will take that momentum into a four-game road trip that begins at 4 p.m. Tuesday against the Detroit Red Wings (11-7-1), who are second in the Atlantic Division with 23 points.

Saturday: Grubauer stars in relief as Seattle Kraken beat Sharks 4-1

Related

TV analyst Eddie Olczyk steps away from Seattle KrakenHere’s the Kraken’s expanded 84-game schedule for 2026-27Kraken will face Flames in 2026-27 home openerReport: Seattle Kraken, Shane Wright agree to part waysSeattle Kraken Free Agency Check-In: 2 originals leaveSeattle Kraken sign a 6-foot-9 bruiser who fights – a lot