Free Advice #2: Shane Wright Should Have Joined Kraken Sooner

No player in Seattle Kraken history has played fewer games and been the subject of more conversations than Shane Wright.

The 2022 1st round Seattle draft choice, 4th overall, is slated to play his 14th career NHL contest Friday when the Kraken face the Anaheim Ducks. It'll be his sixth game this season, and third since been recalled from AHL Coachella Valley earlier this month.

On the popular 32 Thoughts podcast he co-hosts with Elliotte Friedman, Jeff Marek wondered why Wright wasn't called up earlier.

"I found it weird that you have your 1st round draft pick from last season, in a season that is out of reach, and you don't bring up Shane Wright, who is having a really good year at Coachella Valley, to see what he can do at the NHL level.

"Then you send him back down, and for his sake, and for Coachella Valley's sake, he has a good long (AHL playoff) run. I couldn't figure out what was taking Seattle so long. It seemed like such an obvious play."

At the same time, Marek praised Kraken general manager Ron Francis for not weighing Wright down with excess pressure, like if they had scheduled his return for a March 24th game against the team which failed to draft him first overall in '22.

"There was a chance they could have called him up at home against the Montreal Canadiens. That's a setup for way too much attention. It's the obvious sideshow. (Francis) wasn't going to do that, which makes 100% sense to me.

"They weren't going to bring him up toward the end of the season at home. So they had to find a place in the schedule away from Seattle and put him in a position to succeed. That makes sense to me."

Friedman chimed in that Wright could be part of the solution to what's plagued the Kraken all year. "That's the one thing Seattle needs, offensive creativity. It's the hardest thing to find. It's what they need. They have to go out and get it this offseason.

"Now, the easiest thing to do is to promote from within. Hopefully, Wright can be part of that."

Reaction: Patience, which admittedly is finite, has been a defining characteristic of Francis and Kraken ownership. The betting here is that the slow-baking approach to Shane Wright will pay dividends in Seattle for years to come.