Not so much in Seattle, where Francis had to build an AHL farm team from scratch with no draft capital for impact moves at the NHL level. In many ways, the extra time it took for that farm system to materialize explains why Francis has long seemed destined to get more time here than he did in Carolina to finish what he started.
Never mind that he’s already gotten the Kraken a 2023 playoff berth his four prior Carolina squads never attained. This hasn’t been one of those endless rebuilds where a team gets beaten up in the NHL’s basement for a half-dozen years or more.
But playoff berth or not, make no mistake: During his four seasons here, Francis has stealthily overhauled nearly three-quarters of the original expansion roster of regular players the Kraken opened their debut season with. Of 24 regulars from the opening months of 2021-22, only seven – Jared McCann, Jordan Eberle, Jaden Schwartz, Vince Dunn, Adam Larsson, Jamie Oleksiak, and Philipp Grubauer – are still around.
And Francis has done it through a combination of trades, drafting, and free agency.
“We’ve drafted, we think, some pretty good players,” Francis said. “The draft part of it is interesting. You’ve got to get the picks. They’ve got to be high enough. It’s got to be a year that’s a strong draft to get those players that you really want to get, which doesn’t always happen.”
But it takes time for picks to start bearing NHL fruit.
Three players who made some of this week’s trades possible are Kraken draft picks Matty Beniers, Shane Wright, and Ryker Evans. That’s two centermen and a potential second-pairing defenseman.
When Francis entered the July 2021 Expansion Draft and NHL Entry Draft, he stated his goal was to construct his long-term roster core up the middle of the ice and build out from there.
Now, as a fourth Kraken season plays through its final quarter, the team has three starting centermen among its top-six point-getters in Chandler Stephenson, Wright and Beniers, all with multiple contract years remaining. A fourth center, Berkly Catton, is tearing up the Western Hockey League after being drafted No. 8 overall in July and could make the Kraken roster next fall.
The team also now has four defensemen in Vince Dunn, Adam Larsson, Brandon Montour and Evans, all locked into multi-year deals.
And the most active goaltender, Joey Daccord, has five years to go on his contract.
That’s a strong “up the middle” core built for years to come and complimented by talented, goal-scoring wingers in McCann, Eberle, Schwartz, Kaapo Kakko, and Eeli Tolvanen, with AHL rookie scoring sensation Jani Nyman on the NHL cusp as well.
Beyond that, the AHL team has prospects Jacob Melanson and Nikke Kokko – who made NHL debuts the past two weeks – Jagger Firkus, Eduard Sale, Ryan Winterton, Ville Ottavainen, Ty Nelson, Logan Morrison, and David Goyette, not to mention junior level top-scorers Catton and Carson Rehkopf.
And now, with five first-round draft picks and five additional second-rounders in hand for the coming three drafts, Francis can use that stockpile and at least some of his prospects as trade bait to fill remaining holes with the best NHL upgrades he can find. And he’ll have ample salary cap space to do it: Shedding just more than $14 million from current and potential future obligations this week alone by dealing Bjorkstrand, Gourde, and Tanev.
Francis estimates he currently has about $20 million in cap space to utilize.
Sure, skeptics accurately note the Hurricanes only made the playoffs after Francis left and somebody else was put in charge. There’s no way to go back in time and try to disprove that.
And Francis also knows pro sports are a results-based business. That Stanley Cups, which he captured two of as a player, aren’t won on the backs of promises and dreams. Actual goals will beat expected goals every time in the game of winning.
But this is his plan. His prior plan eventually came to fruition in Carolina after the first four years. Now, he’ll get the chance to execute another one while still calling the shots.
For those suggesting not much can happen over a summer, the Kraken's inaugural season finished with just 60 points. One year later, they had 100 points and were in the playoffs.
The Hurricanes in the final Francis season finished with 83 points. The next season, they jumped to 99 and – aside from their two pandemic-shortened playoff years – haven’t had fewer than 111 in any campaign since.
These Kraken are tracking towards 73 points, which is a good 10 fewer than even pessimistic pundits predicted when the season began. Clearly, more was expected, and Francis admits he's “disappointed” in a team he feels – extended injuries to Eberle, Dunn and Gourde aside – has underachieved.
But that disappointment, equally shared by fans, also suggests the baseline for this squad is probably much better than the current record.
Francis felt he’d put together “the best team we had” to date. And he isn’t about to wait around years more on draft picks and AHL player development to get things back to a “playoff contention” level he expects.
What happens from here is up to him and depends on how shrewdly Francis deploys his vastly augmented arsenal of picks, prospects, and cap space.
On March 7, 2018, his quest to bridge Carolina’s playoff points gap was ended for him. But on March 7, 2025, he was still finalizing his Kraken deadline haul by dealing away Tanev for a 2027 second-rounder – a successful end to his first day of additional playing time for Francis beyond what he’d previously been entrusted as a GM.
“We’re not satisfied with where we are,” Francis said. “And we need to make this better.”
And from here on, just as in his playing career, that coveted time to get things right will extend as far as his personal talents can take him.
