By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
My, it only seemed like yesterday — OK, actually four years and a month ago — when the Vegas Golden Knights picked a player from every NHL team to assemble the “Misfits” roster led by Marc-Andre Fleury and create a team that would unite a heartbroken city after the Oct. 1 mass killing on the Strip and would make a record-shattering run to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018.
So, the Seattle Kraken have a tough act to follow.
The NHL’s newest and 32nd team, the Kraken, did the same expansion draft exercise Wednesday as the Knights did back in June 2017. The NHL’s new TV partners, ESPN, which assumed the broadcast rights from NBC, was back at it with the coverage of the Kraken draft from Seattle.
Chris Fowler, the program host who is known for his college football coverage, received as much attention as the players picked for his poking fun at the NHL teams that lost players to the new franchise. Most of the Kraken players were revealed in twitter posts throughout the day, so the announced names were hardly a surprise on live TV.
Vegas fans learned that the Kraken’s first game will be against the Golden Knights at T-Mobile Arena Oct, 12., a move by NHL schedule-makers to pair up the 31st and 32nd franchises in the league.
Fans pointed out Fowler called the Golden Knights by Las Vegas and not Vegas and he also said the Carolina Hurricanes were the Panthers, Carolina’s NFL team. Both the Panthers and Hurricanes had some fun with Fowler’s goofs with these tweets.
People seemed to like the Kraken’s uniforms. Players who were flown in for the draft wore then for the TV spots.
One of the amusing expansion draft TV highlights was former Seattle Seahawks (and even Raiders) running back Marshawn Lynch (who just opened another retail store in Las Vegas on the Strip last week) announcing one of the new Kraken players from Nashville. Beast Mode was in top form, saying, “We’re going with the Boy Boy Calle.”
For the record, here are your Kraken selections.