Seattle Kraken
Seattle Kraken.
Editors note: The Seattle Kraken will join the NHL in 2021. While Pacific Northwest fans are passionate about their local teams, we realize not everyone is well-versed in hockey. Our resident local hockey expert Jonathan West begins a series designed to educate the casual fan.
When our editor asked me to write this basics guide, I knew it had to be more sophisticated than the “…for Dummies” book series. This city has a 100-year hockey history, about as many adult teams, seven local youth organizations, four junior/college teams, and a Stanley Cup. But in a town where Seahawks football is top billing and women’s sports claim yearly titles, how does the Seattle Kraken relate to our current Emerald City favorites?
Soccer is the best Seattle pro sports example to explain the basics of hockey. Simply, players on each team are trying to score in the opponent’s net. Instead of grass, the playing surface is an ice sheet anywhere from .75-to-1.5 inches thick. Coolant lines will run under the Climate Pledge Arena floor to keep the Seattle Kraken home ice around 16-18° Fahrenheit.
The field of play is about half the size of the pitch at Century Link Field. Boards and glass surrounding the rink between 8-12 feet high keep the game as continuous as possible.
A hockey puck has 2 percent the volume of a soccer ball but has 40 percent of its weight. Hockey uses 19 or 20 players per game compared to 11-16 for footy, but only six are on the ice at one time. Besides wearing skates and using sticks to move around a “flat ball,” a hockey net has an area of 24 feet versus 96 in soccer.
Penalties in both sports result in odd-man advantages for the other team, but only for a short time in hockey. A player can score a goal with any part of their body in hockey, just as long as it’s not a kicking motion. There are offside calls in both sports, but in hockey, it’s about where the puck is located instead of the last defensive player. The best teacher, besides the new KIRO TV weekly series, is Peter Puck.
T.J. Oshie, Washington Capitals. (Photo by Michael Miller, via Wikicommons)
Pro baseball is well known for its tiered levels of player development. Hockey is very similar to the MLB in that respect. As a young player trying to make the Seattle Kraken roster, there are three main paths towards getting drafted.
The bantam/midget youth level (ages 13-16) is where the decision is made to forego amateur status for US colleges and play major junior hockey. These 16-to-20-year-olds play across Canada and the US with teams like the Everett Silvertips and Seattle Thunderbirds. The Seattle Junior Totems, a team known for Capitals star TJ Oshie, are part of a lower junior program that caters to players who want to stay closer to home.
The other draft paths are playing professionally overseas or NCAA college hockey. The University of Washington is part of the lower ACHA club system and plays Wazzu and Western Washington in the Pac-8 Conference. But some club programs have turned success into NCAA caliber teams over time like Arizona State.
From age 21 until making it to the NHL, the path is very similar to baseball through the minors. The hockey equivalent of “Triple-A Ball” is the American Hockey League. Seattle’s new AHL franchise will be located in Palm Springs, California, and will start play in 2022.
Many hockey draftees head to “The A” right after training camp. Most move up through the organization like going from the Tacoma Rainiers to the Mariners. Younger players are either sent back to juniors or the “Double-A” ECHL. The Southern Professional Hockey League is like “Single-A” ball in the States.
Jason Spezza, Ottawa vs. Patrice Bergeron, Boston. (Photo by Dan4th Nicholas, via Flickr)
At certain stoppages of play at Key Arena, a basketball would be thrown up between opposing players. In hockey, a similar faceoff is used after all stoppages where the puck is instead thrown down to the ice.
While the WNBA uses three officials on the court, NHL hockey has four on the ice. Two referees and two linesmen set up the teams on either side of the dot and can kick players out of the faceoff circle for violating rules. The visiting team puts their stick down first at center ice, but the defensive player goes first in the eight other faceoff zones.
It’s hard to be a hockey and an NBA fan since their seasons run simultaneously from October through April. The postseasons for both sports, the playoffs, last until mid-June.
There are Annual NHL Awards in late June right before the NHL Draft. Hockey is a sport with a rich history and steeped in tradition. Some of the trophies date back to 1923 and honor after some of the NHL’s founding fathers and legendary heroes.
As in pro basketball, teenagers are an important part of the draft. The NHL select players as young as 17 or 18 in hockey while the basketball minimum is 19. An NHL front office might wheel and deal in July, but the on-ice action breaks until training camps start in September.
Jonathan Quick wins the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP of the 2012 playoffs. (Photo by mark6mauno, via Flickr)
With warm-ups a half-hour before puck drop, a 60-minute hockey game lasts around 2.5 hours in regulation. Each 20 minute period is approximately 45 minutes in real-time length. Besides continuous overtime during the playoffs, regular season overtime should be no more than 30 minutes.
The added time includes a five minute period with three skaters and a goalie per side. Also, in the event a game remains deadlocked after OT, a player vs. goalie shootout takes place.
Players in both sports continually rise above pain to perform. They carry on from situations like a puck to the face or crunched against the boards. You won’t see many one-on-one fights at Starfire Sports for a rugby match, But hockey is the only sport that allows players to fight one another, with appropriate penalties handed out afterward. In my opinion, none of the other Seattle pro sports come close to this resolve besides football.
With the Stanley Cup Final wrapping up in Edmonton during this COVID-19 strained season, we have one year until the Seattle Kraken hit the ice. That’s plenty of time to learn the old, new game in town, and see where it fits into your Seattle fandom.⚓
Jonathan West lives in Seattle’s Mount Baker neighborhood. Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanSWest