The Kingston Kraken: Connections to the Seattle club

The Kingston Kraken? It has a nice ring to it.

Seattle may be more than 3,500 kilometres away, but the connections with hockey scouts and players from the Limestone City are strong.

Let’s start with the most surprising Kraken: Tye Kartye. The LaSalle Secondary School graduate was ignored twice in the NHL draft, despite having a stellar season with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in 2022.

But that didn’t stop him. He caught the eye of Kraken scout Mike Dawson, who is from the Sault and played three seasons with the Kingston Frontenacs.

Dawson arranged for Kartye to be invited to the Kraken training camp. He impressed everyone with his hard work and determination. They signed him to a three-year deal with their AHL affiliate in Coachella Valley, California, with the option to move up to Seattle if needed.

“Tye is a late bloomer and showed a tremendous work ethic and positive attitude at training camp,” Dawson told the Original Hall of Fame from Portland, Oregon, where he was a having a look at a player with the Kamloops Blazers.

“He’s had a great first few seasons of his pro career,” Dawson says. It’s his second full year with the Kraken and his third with the organization.

Kartye says he’s glad he wasn’t drafted. “I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if I had been drafted. It gave me a lot of motivation, being able to choose to come to Seattle rather than being required to go somewhere.”

The odds were against him: Nine out of 10 players in the NHL are drafted. “To get to the NHL without being drafted is pretty unusual,” he admits.

This summer, his contract expires and he’s hoping to sign an extension. He loves playing in Seattle.

Then there’s Shane Wright, the former Kingston Frontenacs player, selected No. 4 in the 2022 entry draft by the Seattle club.

When you are chosen in the first round in the draft, there’s a lot of pressure to perform. And Wright didn’t – at least at first.

“People always forget how young he was when he started in the NHL,” Dawson notes. Indeed, the Burlington native was just 19 when he played his first eight pro games with the Kraken. He was sent back to Kingston and was traded to the Windsor Spitfires.

However, this year he has found his groove. In 60 games this season with the Kraken, he has notched a solid 37 points.

“In the second half of the season, Shane is leading the team in scoring,” Dawson notes. “He’s playing with a lot more confidence.”

As a teenager, Wright was an elite player who got used to doing what he wanted on the ice. In the NHL, that didn’t cut it. Two-way hockey was essential to success.

“Like just about every kid coming out of junior hockey, Shane had a bit of an adjustment period,” Dawson says. “He has a great attitude and listens to everything the development staff has been saying.”

“He’s a great kid and I’m happy for him,” concludes Dawson.

As for Dawson, after graduating from the Frontenacs he went on to play at university in Nova Scotia. He went on to earn an MBA and then found work in the medical device sector. But his love for hockey beckoned.

And he was lucky to have some connections. Ron Francis, his cousin, was assistant general manager of the Carolina Hurricanes in 2012 and Dawson convinced him to hire him as a part-time scout, based in Kingston.

“You almost always have to know somebody to break into NHL scouting,” he says. “It’s a career largely based on networking. You rarely just send in a resume and get a job like you can in other fields.”

Francis was fired by Carolina in 2018 and the following year he was hired as the first general manager in Seattle. Dawson joined the Kraken as a full-time amateur scout in 2020.

“I realized that I had such a passion for hockey that I wanted to build a career from it,” he says. “It’s a dream come true to be paid to watch hockey games.”

Chris MacDonald, another Kingston-based scout, took early retirement from a teaching career to hang out in ice-cold arenas.

Trevor Stienburg is a hockey scout who benefited from networking with hockey gurus like Dawson. Stienburg is from the village of Moscow (“really just a crossroads”), located west of Kingston and not to be confused with the Russian capital.

Stienburg had a stellar 23-year run coaching with the St. Mary’s University Huskies, earning the national coach of the year title three times. When he retired, Dawson suggested he serve as a part-time scout with the Kraken.

It’s not easy. Scouts have to look at teenagers and determine if they have what it takes to make it in the fast-skating, highly skilled milieu of the NHL.

“Some kids show right away that they can do it,” Stienburg says. “With others, you have to project what they are going to be like several years down the road.”

Despite the fact that the Kraken are mired near the basement of the standings this year, the scouts are optimistic.

“We’re trying to stock the team from the bottom with good draft choices,” Stienburg says. “Hopefully, we’ll reap the benefits of the last five years of hard work.”