Seattle SPORTs Now

  In a somewhat unexpected move, the Seattle Kraken fired head coach Dan Bylsma after one season. The Kraken also announced that general manager Ron Francis has been promoted to President of Hockey Operations and assistant general manager Jason Botterill has been promoted to General Manager. At yesterday’s press conference which included owners Samantha Holloway and Todd Leiweke along with Francis and Botterill, there weren’t any grand statements about Bylsma’s short tenure in Seattle, but there were a few hints. ``I didn’t like the way we playing,’’ Francis admitted. ``I didn’t like the structure, and felt we needed a change.’’ Later in the press conference, Francis noted he wasn’t happy with the Kraken’s defensive alignment and that, ``we were spending too much time in our own zone.’’ On Monday, Francis issued a press release stating, ``We thank Dan for his commitment and the energy he brought to our organization over the past four years at the NHL and AHL levels. After a...

  The Seattle Mariners won their third consecutive series, beating the Cincinnati Reds in a wild-and-wooly afternoon game, 11-7, in ten innings at the Great American ballpark. A total of 39 players were used in the game including eight Seattle pitchers and seven Cincinnati hurlers. Randy Arozarena hit a game tying homer in the ninth inning and drove in two more runs in a four-run tenth inning. J.P. Crawford had the game-winning hit for the M’s earlier in the frame. Crawford hit a slow grounder that Reds’ shortstop Elly De La Cruz had no play on. Called the `most exciting player in baseball’ by some, De La Cruz made two errors in the game and had trouble getting to a couple of other balls. The Mariners (10-9) now continue their first long homestand of the season with series in Toronto and Boston. Seattle trails Texas (a team it swept in its most recent homestand) by two games in the American League West. The M’s trailed 2-0 after an inning, took a 5-3 lead into the eighth...

A disappointing season came to an end for the Seattle Krakens last night as they suffered a 6-5 defeat to the Los Angeles Kings at Climate Pledge Arena. The Kraken, who finish the season with a 35-41-6 mark, went down fighting, scoring three third period goals after the playoff-bound Kings had taken a 6-2 lead. After the game, season-ending awards were presented and to the surprise of no one, Joey Daccord copped two major awards as the Kraken netminder was the best player on the team for the second consecutive year. While Daccord didn’t have a great night between the pipes, he copped the Pete Muldoon Award presented to the team’s Most Valuable Player along with the Three Stars award, tabulated by how many times a player’s mentioned in the three-stars competition. Brandon Montour, a first-year Kraken, was selected Fan Favoite, of course voted by the fans. A free-agent signee from the Stanley Cup winning Florida Panthers in the off-season, Montour scored his 16 th goal of the se...

The Seattle Kraken won’t make the National Hockey League playoffs this season, but their penultimate game of the campaign was a noteworthy one. The Kraken and the St. Louis Blues went to seven rounds of a shootout before Chandler Stephenson beat goaltender Jordan Binnington (a star for Canada in the 4Nations tourney) to give the Kraken a 4-3 victory last night at Climate Pledge Arena. The contest ended when Kraken goalkeeper Philipp Grubauer got a piece of the shot from St. Louis’ seventh shooter Jimmy Snuggerud and deflected the puck wide of the net. Grubauer’s stop came after Chandler Stephenson notched the game winner when he went wide and beat Binnington to the stick side. Grubauer recorded a big save on Pavel Buchnevich prior to Stephenson’s goal. Eeli Tolvanen and Kaapo Kakko also scored for Seattle in the shootout. If this is Grubauer’s final game as a Kraken (Joey Daccord is expected to start the season finale against Los Angeles on Tuesday night) it was a nice win to f...

  One of the stated goals when playing against a team like the Vegas Golden Knights is to stay out of the penalty box. The Seattle Kraken were successful in that regard last night not picking up a single penalty against the Knights. But the playoff-bound Knights (and probable Pacific Division regular season champs) still posted a 2-1 victory at T-Mobile Arena in the Kraken’s final road game of the season. The Knights (48-22-9) now lead the second-place Los Angeles Kings by six points with three regular-season games remaining. The Kraken lately have posted victories over team’s that are comfortably in the playoffs (see their recent wins over Edmonton and Los Angeles), but while they were unable to emerge victorious, the game still served as a bounce back performance from the Kraken’s Tuesday night disaster against the Utah Hockey Club (a 7-1 loss). ``It was a really good start to the game,’’ said Kraken coach Dan Bylsma, whose squad falls to 34-40-6 on the season. ``We had a b...

The Seattle Kraken saw their modest three-game winning streak come to an end last night as the Utah Hockey Club set a team record seven goals to post a 7-1 victory. This, of course, is the first year that the former Phoenix Coyotes have played in Salt Lake City under their new name. If the Kraken were due for a clinker this was the night as their plane arrived in Salt Lake at three in the morning after a game with Los Angeles the previous night and Philipp Grubauer, expected to start was a late scratch, apparently due to a flu bug which is going through the team. Seattle (34-39-6) overall, finishes the season with having never won the second game of a back-to-back (two nights in a row) all season. They posted an impressive 2-1 victory over the playoff-bound Kings thanks to first period goals from Matty Beniers and Brandon Montour. Joey Daccord starting in net for the Kraken for the second consecutive night, kept the Kraken in the game for much of the first period. Utah did take a...

  The first full week of the major league baseball season hasn’t been kind to the Seattle Mariners. Thanks to a three-game sweep by the San Francisco Giants, who now have the winningest record in the big leagues, the M’s fall to 3-7. Only the predictably bad Chicago White Sox (2-7) have a worse record. Yesterday’s 5-4 loss in the Bay Area capsulized the Mariner season so far. Seattle tied the game in the top of the ninth on Randy Arozerana’s two-out single. Giant manager and former Seattle skipper Bob Melvin went against conventional wisdom by intentionally walking the lead run ( Cal Raleigh 3-3 with a home run). But Arozerana, who had struckout three times in the game, lashed a single to left field scoring Victor Robles . But alas, the Mariners would leave the bases loaded. In the bottom of the ninth with a runner on first, Robles made perhaps the best catch of the season. Running at full speed- 113 feet in 6.2 seconds- Robles leaped into the right field stands to snare ...