Coach Dave Hakstol fired Kraken after he missed the NHL playoffs due to…

Seattle Kraken head coach Dave Hakstol, who led the team to its inaugural postseason trip last season, will not be given another opportunity to secure a second straight postseason berth.

After a poor season in which the team finished with 12 fewer victories and 19 fewer points than the previous year and missed the playoffs, 55-year-old Hakstol was let go by the Kraken on Monday. Only ten months have passed since he was named a finalist for the NHL’s Coach of the Year, the Jack Adams Award.

Hakstol stated, “Now, we have to take a step back and make sure that we do everything that we can to make sure that we’re not in this circumstance a year from now,” following the team’s season-ending road victory against Minnesota on April 18.

It seems that some in higher positions inside the company believed that a change in coaches was one of those factors.

Ron Francis, general manager of Kraken, issued the following statement but did not immediately name a replacement:

“I appreciate Dave’s efforts and commitment to the Kraken series. We’ve made the decision to replace our head coach after our end-of-season evaluation. Although these choices are never simple, we believe that taking this action will help guarantee that our team keeps getting better and changing. Dave is a great guy and an excellent coach. We hope the best for him and his family. We’ll get to work right now by hiring the next head coach of the Kraken.

Francis also declared that Paul McFarland, the assistant coach, will not be coming back.

Depending on whether potential candidates are hired by teams that are still in play, the team’s hunt for a coach may go beyond the NHL playoffs.

Rod Brind’Amour, Francis’ former teammate and current bench boss for the Carolina Hurricanes, is one player to keep an eye on. The Kraken had intended to sign him in 2021, right before he inked a three-year contract extension. This season marks the end of the agreement, and Brind’Amour has previously stated that negotiations won’t be simple.

Joe Sacco, the assistant for the Boston Bruins and a former Colorado Avalanche coach, is someone to keep an eye on. Three years ago, he was reportedly one of the finalist candidates interviewed for the Kraken position.

Numerous accomplished former coaches are in high demand. These include former St. Louis Blues Stanley Cup winner Craig Berube, Minnesota Wild bench boss Dean Evason, former Todd McLellan of the Los Angeles Kings, former Gerard Gallant of the New York Rangers, and former Dan Bylsma of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who currently coaches the AHL Coachella Valley affiliate of the Kraken.

Jay Leach, the assistant coach for the Krakens, who has excelled in working with the team’s defensemen, may also be taken into consideration. Leach reportedly received consideration for head coaching positions with the Rangers and Bruins during the previous two offseasons.

The New Jersey Devils fired Hakstol and sacked Lindy Ruff earlier in the season, making it the first time two Jack Adams finalists were fired the following season. Hakstol and Ruff are both from Warburg, a tiny farming community in Alberta with a population of 766.

Even if Hakstol’s fortunes have turned around so quickly, it is not entirely unexpected. Since the end of the previous season, all NHL clubs with greater success than the Kraken in recent years have fired their coaches: the playoff-bound Rangers, Oilers, Kings, and Islanders.

They made it to the playoffs last spring, much like the Kraken. In fact, Hakstol ended the current season as the second-longest tenured coach in the whole Western Conference, behind Avalanche bench boss Jared Bednar, despite leading the Kraken for just three seasons. This indicates that his club had more patience than most with the guy behind the bench.

Given his lesser-known standing compared to the other, more well-known contenders, fans had been debating Hakstol’s selection to head the Kraken extensively. Among the contenders he defeated was former Arizona Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet, who was hired by the Vancouver Canucks last season and had his first successful postseason campaign as a full bench player.

With little professional playing experience, longtime University of North Dakota coach Hakstol spent portions of four seasons as the Philadelphia Flyers’ head coach right out of college.

Before repeating the same in Kraken’s second season and winning his first postseason round as a coach by defeating Colorado in Game 7 of the previous spring, he guided the Flyers to two postseason berths.

Before losing Game 7 of their Western Conference Final matchup with the Dallas Stars in May, Hakstol’s squad was on the verge of winning the season, having won just three of their first ten games and five of their first seventeen. It’s noteworthy that after emphasizing the need for a fast start during training camp, Hakstol’s team managed to score just three goals in their first four games of play.

The Kraken eliminated themselves from playoff contention with a second stretch of eight straight defeats after breaking through an eight-game losing slump with a franchise-record nine consecutive wins. They went without a victory over a club headed for the playoffs for the last six weeks of the season, finishing 0-8-1 versus Dallas, Winnipeg, Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Washington.

Only six of Kraken’s final 20 games were victories, including three against the third-worst-placed Anaheim team in the NHL, one against the league-worst San Jose team, and one against the sixth-place Arizona club. The Kraken fell to the eighth-worst position in the NHL as a result of that late collapse, three points above Ottawa and four ahead of Arizona.

Hakstol once chastised his players for not turning up after they lost to Montreal on March 24 for the seventh time in a straight, a game in which they trailed 4-0 in the first period.

Hakstol remarked, “You play this game with enthusiasm.” “You play it for the guy sitting next to you, and you play it with passion. And as of right now, we’re not doing that. And that is absurd. That’s not just disheartening. That’s difficult to participate in, and we intend to change that.

Down the stretch, the Kraken did appear to gather himself and play with greater intensity and focus despite challenging, lame duck conditions. However, they never managed to recapture the winning formula that had helped them defeat Boston and Winnipeg, two teams vying for the Stanley Cup, in February and March.

In addition, they defeated Vegas on January 1 in the outdoor Winter Classic and defeated the Islanders and Washington Capitals, who were headed to the playoffs, on the road in February and January.

The Kraken would promptly follow a run of wins with a run of losses once they started to resemble a playoff club once more. A couple of the losses, including a 2-0 setback on the road to San Jose, who had the worst goal differential of the salary-cap era, brought to light their season-long inability to score goals.

The Kraken have scored one goal or fewer ten times and two goals or fewer twelve times in their previous twenty games. Only six times did they score three goals or more, and those four times came against the Sharks and Ducks.

In 26 of their 82 games, the Kraken were only able to score one goal. All of those games were losses. Additionally, they were shut out seven times, compared to just three times in the previous season.