A
recent story from Dom Luszczyszyn of
The Athletic gained traction locally when it cast doubt on the performance of the Seattle Kraken front office in free agency. Luszczyszyn analyzed unrestricted free agent contracts from the last five years against the player’s “expected value” as of the time of signing under his player performance model. While Luszczyszyn’s goal was to understand whether teams in states without state income tax had an advantage, he noted that Seattle ranked last (tied with Anaheim) in contract dollars relative to value in his sample.
As Luszczyszyn concedes, his model is “not the [sole] arbiter of truth,” but his analysis raises a number of questions. How do free agency decisions get made? And how have the Kraken measured up against expectations? Are there other ways we can or should be looking at the issue if our goal is to understand Seattle’s performance signing unrestricted free agents on the market?
That’s our topic for today. With contract data from
PuckPedia and contract projections from
Evolving Hockey, I can offer a few more data points to consider. Let’s get to it.
The most dangerous day on the calendar
July 1 is a chaotic day for NHL front offices. The restriction on contacting free agents from other teams is lifted at noon Eastern Time, and within hours, a large majority of the “best available” free agents have signed a contract.
It is a frenzied end to an arduous process. In the months leading up to free agency, teams spend countless hours valuing players and identifying targets,
culminating in June pro scouting meetings where an offseason plan is set. All of that work is deployed on July 1.
“I’ve always said the two most dangerous days are trade deadline day and free agency day,” Seattle Kraken president of hockey ops Ron Francis has
often refrained, because “it’s easy to overpay for players” at those times. This is a common sentiment around the league. Columbus Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell
has called July 1 a day where “you can get yourself in big trouble.”
Why is this? What actually happens during those fleeting hours on free agency day? Kraken general manager Jason Botterill gave a glimpse behind the curtain to Seattle Kraken season ticket holders during a July 3 breakfast before the final day of the 2025 Kraken Development Camp.
Shortly after noon, teams contact player agents with a fully realized offer, along with a pitch about why the team and market is a good fit for the player. In a competitive situation, the agent is compiling multiple offers and helping the player decide between them. It is relatively rare that a negotiation on core term or value elements happens on July 1 because there is not time to do it. The agent may come back with a minor counteroffer around the margins relating to signing bonuses, cash flow, or the like, but July 1 deals often resemble the team’s initial proposal.
This puts a lot of stress not only on the team’s internal player valuations—we think this forward is “worth” X—but also its market analysis—this player is one of the only top-six centers available, and we think he’ll get a competitive offer from team Y or Z. Teams are making big decisions, in a hard-cap environment, based on imperfect information—hence the danger.
Methods of analyzing performance in free agency
Through five free agency periods, how have the Seattle Kraken performed in their unrestricted free agent contracts? Has the team beaten or fallen behind its competitors? We could strive for answers a few ways.
Return on investment approach. One approach would be to consider the return on investment. With the benefit of hindsight, how have the players the Kraken signed performed relative to the contracts given to them? This could be judged by various standard or advanced metrics measuring player performance.
This is a worthy inquiry, but it is probably premature to reach any conclusions for the Kraken using this method given that the final analysis remains open on several deals the Kraken signed
before the team ever took the ice, including Philipp Grubauer, Jamie Olekisak, and Jaden Schwartz. Perhaps we can return to this approach a few years down the road.
Projected performance approach. Another approach would be to compare the contracts the team handed out versus a projection of player value over the term of the contract at the time the contract was signed. This approach is unconcerned with actual performance and escapes any accusation of hindsight bias by using only the information that was available as of signing. This was
Luszczyszyn’s approach, using his model. Again, Luszczyszyn’s model is not the only one. One could use other methods of projecting player value using standard or advanced metrics or alternative player valuation models.
Market approach. As we discussed above, though, player value is only half of the player acquisition story. What if we wanted to understand how the player contract measured up against market expectations at the time it was signed? One could do this by comparing the contracts the Kraken handed out against contemporaneous projections of player market value.
This is a complex task that involves developing an accurate understanding of how to predict market value. Fortunately for us,
Evolving Hockey has developed such a
contract projection system that has proven
quite accurate over time.
I would recommend giving
Evolving Hockey‘s
contract projection explainer a read. In short, the model uses inputs including position, age, contract status, draft round, years since draft, time on ice, goals, primary assists, individual shot attempts, individual expected goals, giveaways, takeways, on-ice 5-on-5 goal differential, and on-ice 5-on-5 shot attempt differential, among others, to create value projections based on various potential term lengths. The model yields a “projected” contract by estimating the contract term first and then linking it to the AAV the model projects for that term.
For example,
Evolving Hockey’s contract tool projected a four-year contract for defenseman Ryan Lindgren in free agency this offseason with a further projection of $4.841 million average annual value. Ultimately, Lindgren signed a four-year contract with a $4.5 million average annual value in Seattle. Regardless of what a specific projection system may predict Lindgren’s
future value—whether Luszczyszyn’s or any other—we can say that Lindgren’s contract was roughly in line with what the expected market was for him.
Using
Evolving Hockey’s projections plus contract information compiled by
PuckPedia, we can generalize from this individual example to every unrestricted free agent signing during the summer free agency period over the last five years—i.e., since the Kraken have been in existence—to determine which contracts and teams have gone over or under market expectation. How does Seattle fare?
Kraken contracts versus market expectation
While Luszczyszyn’s projected-value approach disliked Seattle’s contracts, our market-oriented analysis tells a slightly different story. On a per-year basis—which is how Luszczyszyn reported his results—Seattle’s contracts came in
better than expectation: approximately $160,000
lower than predicted by
Evolving Hockey’s model.
(It’s worth noting that for reasons explained shortly, goalies are not included here. If Philipp Grubauer’s six-year, $35.4 million deal were part of it, the Kraken may have poorer contract performance metrics.)
In terms of total contract value paid, however, Seattle does come in above the predicted level. The contracts averaged $1.15 million total value above expectation. This is because three of the more overvalued contracts based on
Evolving Hockey’s model (Brandon Montour, Chandler Stephenson, and Jaden Schwartz) were also significantly longer-term deals than projected.
Where does Seattle stack up versus the rest of the league? In terms of annual contract value surplus, the Kraken rank 14th in the NHL over the last five years. In terms of total contract value, Seattle ranks 27th.
Remarkably, Anaheim’s contracts, which were tied for last in Luszczyszyn’s projected annual value analysis, come out middle of the pack in this look on an annual basis and
best in the league on a total surplus value basis.
Market analysis methodology
For this exercise, I compiled a list of all unrestricted free agent skater contracts signed between June and September over the last five summer signing periods valued at $1 million average annual value or greater. I believe this mostly replicates Luszczyszyn’s sample, though he didn’t specify whether he included unrestricted free agents re-signing with their own team before reaching free agency.
I included signings in June because by that point these players understand their market value (ahem) even if they are not technically a free agent. It was also necessary to capture many significant signings, including the Mitch Marner signing this offseason.
I excluded contract extensions—deals that would begin a full season out—since those are not true unrestricted free agent signings. Goalies weren’t included because
Evolving Hockey does not create projections for them. (Luszczyszyn’s analysis didn’t include goalies either.) And, finally, I excluded low-value contracts below $1 million because the question of “value” disappears for marginal players whose contracts can be buried in the AHL without payroll or cap consequence. (Luszczyszyn also excluded these low-value deals.)
Conclusions, caveats, and context (plus taxes)
Looking at Seattle’s contracts chronologically (as displayed in Table 1 above), we see that the Kraken have generally met or out-performed market expectations, with just a few exceptions. While Seattle signed a few “above-market” contracts in its inaugural year, this makes sense when factoring in that the team likely needed to pay a premium to attract veteran talent to a new franchise. Beyond that, only the 2024 signings of Montour and Stephenson stand out negatively based on
Evolving Hockey’s market value model. And there is plenty of context to put around those signings—Seattle had a surplus of cap space, a deficit of talent, and immense pressure to compete as a new franchise looking solidify its fanbase and season-ticket renewals under the specter of the NBA’s return to city.
Even omitting that important context, Seattle’s five-year market performance (as displayed in Table 2 above) is very similar to that of the well-regarded Tampa Bay Lightning, both on an annual and total-value basis. Returning to Luszczyszyn’s original prompt, this is particularly notable because the Lightning’s home state of Florida is income tax free, just like Washington State.
Any approach has its limitations, and this one is no different. Looking at Seattle’s deals with hindsight, it’s easy to say that the “best” market value contract (Andre Burakovsky) was a debacle, while the “worst” market value contract (Montour) had a strong first year. Again, this market study is not attempting to measure return on investment. That’s a different analysis—one we may undertake in a few years.
Finally, a few caveats before we close this out. First,
Evolving Hockey missed about a dozen projections league-wide over the five-year stretch. I don’t think those contracts would have significantly influenced the results here because each of the contracts were relatively minor.
Second, the five-year sample is quite small. There’s no way around that; individual outlier contracts can easily skew a team’s standing in this study.
Finally, as mentioned above, this study does not account for goalie contracts. Philipp Grubauer’s contract remains one of the largest in Kraken franchise history, and it was met with mixed reception at the time it was signed. That contract is part of Seattle’s history of signing free agents, even if it doesn’t factor into the numbers here.
Curtis Isacke
Curtis is a Sound Of Hockey contributor and member of the Kraken press corps. Curtis is an attorney by day, and he has read the NHL collective bargaining agreement and bylaws so you don’t have to. He can be found analyzing the Kraken, NHL Draft, and other hockey topics on
Twitter and
Bluesky @deepseahockey.
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Evaluating Seattle Kraken free agent contracts against market expectation appeared first on
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