Ron Francis as Kraken GM ~ The Verdict Is In

[Kimota]

You could just see it at the Expansion draft, it was so abysmal.

 

[Rebels57]

And he is guilty of being a bust as a GM, as predicted by many here including me. Every year, the Kraken just trudge forth in a steady mediocrity, got no future, have no past.

He was an awful hire from the jump. Damn near every fan of all teams knew it. Somehow billionaire sports teams owners didnt know it though. Did literally nothing in Carolina. I think he actually enjoys being mediocre.

 

[tfwnogf]

Are kraken doing well financially? I honestly forget they exist a lot of the time. Beating Colorado in the playoffs was their best achievement. Was hoping they'd build on that but maybe in time they will.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

Are kraken doing well financially? I honestly forget they exist a lot of the time. Beating Colorado in the playoffs was their best achievement. Was hoping they'd build on that but maybe in time they will.

The Kraken are in the upper half of profitability. They have done very well off-ice, but probably due more to the affluent Seattle market than anything on-ice.

 

[sigma six]

The Kraken are in the upper half of profitability. They have done very well off-ice, but probably due more to the affluent Seattle market than anything on-ice.

Yeah, they're doing pretty well. Attendance has been great considering the team doesn't win, but Seattle locals love their teams.

 

[shadow1]

I thought his Expansion Draft selections were rough.

Obviously, there were some big hits (Borgen, Daccord, Dunn, Geekie, McCann, etc). But the decision by Francis not to make any trades prior to the draft, coupled with a pointless game of chicken with Montreal regarding Carey Price, hurt the Kraken.

Even that aside, I think a ton of obvious value was left on the board. Ignoring pending UFAs and hindsight players (i.e. Drouin, Ingram, Mikkola, Stolarz, Walman, etc.), I argue you could build a better team with the "leftovers" than the one Francis drafted:

LW	C	RW
Ondrej Palat [Yanni Gourde]	Matt Duchene [Calle Jarnkrok]	Frank Vatrano [Chris Driedger]
Evgeni Dadonov [Joey Daccord]	J.T. Compher [Jonas Donskoi]	Nino Niederreiter [Morgan Geekie]
Alex Kerfoot [Jared McCann]	Max Domi [Gavin Bayreuther]	Vladimir Tarasenko [Vince Dunn]
Vlad Namestikov [Dennis Cholowski]	Nick Bjugstad [Carson Soucy]	Christian Fischer [Tyler Pitlick]

LD	RD
Marcus Pettersson [Brandon Tanev]	Dylan DeMelo [Mason Appleton]
Nikita Zadorov [John Quenneville]	Shayne Gostisbehere [Carsen Twarynski]
Olli Maatta [Kurtis MacDermid]	Nick Jensen [Vitek Vanacek]

G
Mike Smith [Adam Larsson]
Scott Wedgewood [Nathan Bastian]

Great team? No.
Heinous goaltending? Yes, but not worse than Grubauer.
Better than what Francis drafted (despite handicap of not picking Daccord/Dunn/McCann/etc.)? IMO, yes.
Fun exercise? Hell yes.

 

[VivaLasVegas]

I thought his Expansion Draft selections were rough.

Obviously, there were some big hits (Borgen, Daccord, Dunn, Geekie, McCann, etc). But the decision by Francis not to make any trades prior to the draft, coupled with a pointless game of chicken with Montreal regarding Carey Price, hurt the Kraken.

Even that aside, I think a ton of obvious value was left on the board. Ignoring pending UFAs and hindsight players (i.e. Drouin, Ingram, Mikkola, Stolarz, Walman, etc.), I argue you could build a better team with the "leftovers" than the one Francis drafted:

LW	C	RW
Ondrej Palat [Yanni Gourde]	Matt Duchene [Calle Jarnkrok]	Frank Vatrano [Chris Driedger]
Evgeni Dadonov [Joey Daccord]	J.T. Compher [Jonas Donskoi]	Nino Niederreiter [Morgan Geekie]
Alex Kerfoot [Jared McCann]	Max Domi [Gavin Bayreuther]	Vladimir Tarasenko [Vince Dunn]
Vlad Namestikov [Dennis Cholowski]	Nick Bjugstad [Carson Soucy]	Christian Fischer [Tyler Pitlick]

LD	RD
Marcus Pettersson [Brandon Tanev]	Dylan DeMelo [Mason Appleton]
Nikita Zadorov [John Quenneville]	Shayne Gostisbehere [Carsen Twarynski]
Olli Maatta [Kurtis MacDermid]	Nick Jensen [Vitek Vanacek]

G
Mike Smith [Adam Larsson]
Scott Wedgewood [Nathan Bastian]

Great team? No.
Heinous goaltending? Yes, but not worse than Grubauer.
Better than what Francis drafted (despite handicap of not picking Daccord/Dunn/McCann/etc.)? IMO, yes.
Fun exercise? Hell yes.

What got me was Francis' attitude, "There are no good trade opportunities because I didn't seek to create any."

The whole "teams wisened up" excuse is also so lame, since each team acts purely in their own best selfish self-interests and if a trade makes sense then it makes sense, without much regard to whether a future competitor is being built (and particularly if they are in a different conference).

 

[mouser]

Obviously, there were some big hits (Borgen, Daccord, Dunn, Geekie, McCann, etc). But the decision by Francis not to make any trades prior to the draft, coupled with a pointless game of chicken with Montreal regarding Carey Price, hurt the Kraken.

At least Seattle made the correct decision not to select Price.

 

[syz]

Beyond the expansion draft they were still given the advantage of a clean cap but then couldn't help themselves from the typical July 1st free agent frenzy mistakes.

 

[Silkytentacles]

ive liked the drafting and he’s playing the long road I think this team could be good in a couple it’s weird to see Beniers take a dip. Didn’t like loosing geekie and dacord was a steal

 

[biturbo19]

Beyond the expansion draft they were still given the advantage of a clean cap but then couldn't help themselves from the typical July 1st free agent frenzy mistakes.

Yeah. This was the thing that was so bizarre about Francis' blueprint for the Kraken to me. Instead of using the Expansion Draft to pick up other teams "decent/good players on not great deals"...it's like he deliberately set out to pick a bunch of absolutely nothing players for cheap, just so that he could go out and sign "his own bad UFA premium contract" type deals over the first couple years.

He had the advantage of Vegas being good right away, plus a very desirable market to sign/live in. So he had these UFA options available to him. And it seemed like he decided the way to go was to sign his own bad deals on mediocre players, rather than just using the other advantage of potential "opportunity" to sign bargain UFA deals with upside and spend on some more expensive veterans with "upside" via expansion. ie. He looked at the winning Vegas strategy of taking on and gambling on some slightly "undesirable" contracts in the draft on higher upside guys and chasing the "big fish" in UFA + Trades...and decided to just penny pinch in the expansion draft on low upside "safe" picks and guys who were just pointless minor league lifer depth, and then dive head first into signing "mushy middle" mediocre players to UFA type premium contracts. The part of the UFA market where prices tend to be the most inflated relative to what they offer.

 

[Wallet Inspector]

Good. Expansion teams arent supposed to be good right away

This shit is so petty, lol

 

[Ole Gil]

The shift in Carolina when they went from Francis to Waddell was massive.

Just 'stay the course' with Francis making tiny moves and questionable personnel hires and reclamation projects as the "big moves" that sometimes cost them the season. Sticking with Bill Peters. Scott Darling.

Then Waddell took over, and all of a sudden, Canes reshape their roster into a winner, and continually add pieces big and small while instilling a winning culture and consistent success.

What got me was Francis' attitude, "There are no good trade opportunities because I didn't seek to create any."

We used to think there were no good trade opportunities in Carolina too. Then when Francis left, all of a sudden there were seemingly endless trade opportunities.

 

[Fish on The Sand]

While I agree with the sentiment that Francis is not that good of a GM. This is the normal path of an expansion team.

Vegas rotted people's brains and assume expansion teams all should follow that path. Vegas was the outlier not the norm.

Carolina wasn't an expansion team and they were dogshit while he was there.

Vegas was also the beneficiary of the new expansion rules, while Seattle had to deal with teams that weren't gonna let themselves get ripped off again.

Seattle had the exact same rules, so Vegas didn't benefit from the rules.

Vegas did benefit from teams trying to be way too clever and trading away assets for basically nothing though.

Seattle could have benefitted from that in a diet way. Francis wanted what Vegas was getting and left some deals on the table.

 

[Chaos2k7]

While I agree with the sentiment that Francis is not that good of a GM. This is the normal path of an expansion team.

Vegas rotted people's brains and assume expansion teams all should follow that path. Vegas was the outlier not the norm.

One note, the expansion process is so much more advantageous now, more so than it had ever been in the history of the league prior.

The NHL really wanted LV and SEA to be competitive right away.

 

[Voight]

Carolina wasn't an expansion team and they were dogshit while he was there.


Seattle had the exact same rules, so Vegas didn't benefit from the rules.

Vegas did benefit from teams trying to be way too clever and trading away assets for basically nothing though.

Seattle could have benefitted from that in a diet way. Francis wanted what Vegas was getting and left some deals on the table.

The easiest thing to do would've been what Arizona was doing at the time and taking on bad contracts for draft picks. But Francis dropped the ball there.

 

[majormajor]

People don't seem to realize that they've been rebuilding under the hood. Nine 2nd rounders in the last 3 drafts.

Under the expansion rules, they didn't have access to 18-23 year olds, who are now in that 23-28 year old age range, so the team has a weird gap between young drafted talent and older expansion picks that are now aging out. They're missing the prime pieces.

So obviously they do what teams in that position do, and move assets towards picks and younger players (rebuilding). They're doing it. They have now a very enviable forward prospect pool, along with an enviable 1-2 in young centers to build around in Wright and Beniers.

Not all of their moves have made sense, but from what I gather on HF, people are overplaying their UFA signings and ignoring the actual rebuilding going on underneath.

 

[CLW]

People don't seem to realize that they've been rebuilding under the hood. Nine 2nd rounders in the last 3 drafts.

Under the expansion rules, they didn't have access to 18-23 year olds, who are now in that 23-28 year old age range, so the team has a weird gap between young drafted talent and older expansion picks that are now aging out. They're missing the prime pieces.

So obviously they do what teams in that position do, and move assets towards picks and younger players (rebuilding). They're doing it. They have now a very enviable forward prospect pool, along with an enviable 1-2 in young centers to build around in Wright and Beniers.

Not all of their moves have made sense, but from what I gather on HF, people are overplaying their UFA signings and ignoring the actual rebuilding going on underneath.

GMRF gets some flak for signing UFA Stephenson and to a lesser extent Montour. However, if you look at the UFAs that may become available over the next couple of years, outside the very top there are very meagre pickings. Since the plan is to move on from the expansion picks, signing Stephenson and Montour to steady the ship as the team is about to get much younger makes sense. Stephenson, Montour and the remaining vets (Larsson, Eberle, Schwartz (?)) prevent the Kraken from becoming Buffalo as Gourde, Burakovsky, Bjorkstrand, Grubauer, Tanev, Oleksiak (?), Dunn (?), McCann (?), Schwartz (?) move on over the next couple of seasons.

 

[majormajor]

GMRF gets some flak for signing UFA Stephenson and to a lesser extent Montour. However, if you look at the UFAs that may become available over the next couple of years, outside the very top there are very meagre pickings. Since the plan is to move on from the expansion picks, signing Stephenson and Montour to steady the ship as the team is about to get much younger makes sense. Stephenson, Montour and the remaining vets (Larsson, Eberle, Schwartz (?)) prevent the Kraken from becoming Buffalo as Gourde, Burakovsky, Bjorkstrand, Grubauer, Tanev, Oleksiak (?), Dunn (?), McCann (?), Schwartz (?) move on over the next couple of seasons.

I don't think that was the plan exactly - there is some disunity in the Kraken FO over how to handle UFA - Friedman also reported last year that Francis wanted to hire Todd McLellan and got overruled or outvoted by others who wanted Bylsma. We know enough to know that some folks are more patient than others while you still have some influential voices - likely still including ownership - that insist on winning now. Perhaps that is changing this year as it has become more apparent that the team doesn't look capable of winning. I think there was a significant feeling last summer that they had to go big in UFA to try and win now, and these happened to be the best players they could get. The plan wasn't to sign veterans merely to act as insulators during a rebuild, though that is what we're going to get.

Either way, they've still been accumulating picks and prospects and I think that part of the story is getting ignored here.

 

[Perfect_Drug]

Teams WERE prepared for the Seattle expansion draft though.

The Vegas draft really f***ed up a lot of teams that gave away NMC like candy, and were more or less forced protection slots. Deep teams were all f***ed. And instead of giving up 1 core piece, they ended up giving 2 amazing pieces to protect that one piece.

Florida gave Reilly Smith (25 Goals) to Vegas, if they would take away Marchessault (who scored 30 goals). There was absolutely nothing like that in Seattle. Teams were warned beforehand, and basically were aware of the dangers of NMC years leading up to it.

Minny had to give away both Tuch and Haula under similar circumstances.

James Neal and David Perron were picked.

That's a LOT of f***ing goals for an expansion team.
That's 6x 20-30 goal scorers picked up immediately.

Theodore was given away to protect Josh Manson.


There was no robbery this time. Deep teams traded all their shit for picks before Seattle got to them.


They got their #1 goalie in MA Fleury. But they could have taken Binnington too.
Those kinds of goalies weren't exposed to Seattle. They were traded long before they got to the draft.

 

[ONO94]

The easiest thing to do would've been what Arizona was doing at the time and taking on bad contracts for draft picks. But Francis dropped the ball there.

The same Arizona team that still is terrible and not even in Arizona anymore? That is your example of how to get things done?