After knocking off the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche and taking the Dallas Stars to Game Seven in Round Two of the 2023 Stanley Cup playoffs, it’s been a downhill ride for the Seattle Kraken. The team finished 17 points back of the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference last season and is currently nine points back through the halfway point this year.
That said, it comes with little surprise that in the latest episode of Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman’s ’32 Thoughts’ podcast, he reported the Kraken are expanding their horizons beyond just selling away their pending unrestricted free agents. Friedman specifically notes Oliver Bjorkstrand and André Burakovsky as available trade candidates.
Trading either player won’t be simple, but it would help expand the prospect pool for an organization that’s had little time to do so, as Friedman notes. Bjorkstrand and Burakovsky are signed through the 2025-26 season, with an additional year for the latter, and their contracts include 10-team modified no-trade clauses.
Bjorkstrand should have the most value of the two given that he’s on pace for his third-straight 20-goal season in Seattle. He’s been one of the most consistent middle-six players for the Kraken over that stretch scoring 53 goals and 132 points in 206 games averaging 15:49 of ice time per game. He’s a strong possession player with a relatively affordable $5.4MM salary who can help on most team’s second power-play unit if not their first.
Burakovsky is on a much different trajectory. After scoring 22 goals and 61 points en route to a Stanley Cup ring in 2021-22 with the Colorado Avalanche, Burakovksy signed a five-year, $27.5MM contract with Seattle to give the team much-needed scoring.
He missed 66 games due to injury in the first two years of the deal and has missed three this season. The Klagenfurt, Austria native had decent production in limited action in the first year of the contract with 13 goals and 39 points in 49 games but has struggled since.
Since the first game of the 2023-24 NHL season, Burakovsky has scored 11 goals and 32 points in the following 90 regular season contests making his $5.4MM salary somewhat of a sunk cost. It’s reasonable the Kraken want to move on from Burakovsky and his contract but they shouldn’t expect to get much in return.
Seattle may listen to other players signed beyond this season should they receive adequate returns for Bjorkstrand and/or Burakovsky. Players such as Jamie Oleksiak, Jaden Schwartz, and Jared McCann could all become expendable with the latter likely having relatively high trade value across the league.