Ranking the Kraken’s top 10 choices from the Bruins

It’s decision time for the Seattle Kraken.

Welcomed into the NHL as the league’s 32nd team, Kraken general manager Ron Francis will officially build his team Wednesday with the selection of a player from 30 of the league’s 31 teams. (The Golden Knights, the league’s 31st team introduced in 2017, are exempt from this draft, but will not see any of the Kraken’s $650 million expansion fee.)

And when it comes to the Bruins, Francis and Co. were delivered a list of 29 possible Bruins to be drafted out of Boston and towards Rain City. The Don Sweeney-submitted featured a wide array of options, really. You had tons of pending free agents, prospects who have spent multiple years in Europe, and it even included a recently retired player.

But here’s the 10 top option for the Kraken ahead of tonight’s festivities…

• 10. Ondrej Kase

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  The 25-year-old Kase appeared in just three games in 2021, and exited two of them early due to concussion issues. His entire career has been derailed by concussions, really, and the Bruins are not expected to extend him a qualifying offer for 2021-22. But if there's a team that could afford to take a flier on the former 20-goal scorer, it's a team without any other contracts on the books.
  
  Kase's uncertain playing future makes this incredibly unlikely (we're also talking about the 10th-best option here), but you can expect the Kraken to take a few low-risk, high-reward plays when making 30 picks in one night.

• 9. Zach Senyshyn

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  2015 first-round pick Zach Senyshyn has not panned out how the Bruins expected. Drafted with the No. 15 pick six years ago, Senyshyn has appeared in just 14 NHL games, with one (empty-net) goal and two assists to his name. He's also had a bad habit of getting injured right when it looks like he's been about to build some sort of momentum. But one of Senyshyn's biggest supporters, former P-Bruins head coach Jay Leach, is now behind the bench in Seattle as an assistant coach.

• 8. Mike Reilly

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  It's believed that the Kraken will dip into the free agent waters. Now, I write this knowing full well that had they set their sights on Mike Reilly, we probably would've heard about it by now. (That's how it's happened with the Panthers' Chris Driedger anyway.) But if the Kraken were going to do that with a Bruin, Reilly would be the guy, as the 28-year-old is coming off a career-high 27 points (all assists) in 55 games between the Sens and Bruins.
• 7. Chris Wagner

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  Among the many things Vegas got right with their 2017 draft: Character guys and solid fourth-line talents. Chris Wagner had a down 2020 campaign, and opened up about his recent struggles with anxiety, but he's just two years removed from a career-best 12 goals and 19 points. Wagner also hits anything that moves (his 879 hits are the eighth-most among all NHL forwards since 2016), and could be a solid add as Seattle's fourth-line right wing.

• 6. Curtis Lazar

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  The 26-year-old Curtis Lazar had a respectable 2021 campaign between Boston and Buffalo, with seven goals (a career-high) and 13 points in 50 games, and Lazar emerged the victor in 54.2 percent of his d-zone faceoffs in the postseason. Lazar really brought a unique element to the B's fourth line following his pickup, too, as the Bruins were actually creating offense and getting out of the defensive-zone mud for perhaps the first time all season upon Lazar's jump into action down the stretch. He's also under contract for a highly-affordable $800,000 in 2021-22.

• 5. Jakub Zboril

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  Boston’s top draft pick from the 2015 NHL Draft, Zboril finally jumped into the mix as a full-time NHLer in 2021, but failed to lock down a spot, as he was sent to the press box following the B’s acquisition of Mike Reilly. Still, the 24-year-old Zboril had nine assists (two of which came on the man advantage) and averaged 17:03 per night in his 42-game sample this past season.
  
  He's another player that Leach is more than familiar with, too, and Zboril was utilized as one of Leach's go-to closers down the stretch before the COVID-19 pandemic paused and eventually canceled the 2019-20 AHL season.
  
  Zboril is signed at $725,000 for 2021-22 and will be an arbitration-eligible free agent at the end of that deal.
• 4. Karson Kuhlman

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  The word is that Francis is going to prioritize cap space.
  
  If that's indeed the case, a guy like Kuhlman could have some definite value to the Kraken's bottom-six forward grouping.
  
  As those in Boston know by now, he's not going to score at a terribly high clip (he's totaled six goals and 13 points in 56 career NHL games), but he'll certainly generate chances, as Kuhlman actually ranks sixth among Boston forwards in individual high-danger chances per 60 of five-on-five play since 2018, at 3.49 (minimum 600 minutes). For added context, that's just a tick behind David Pastrnak's fifth-best (3.58), and 0.26 off Patrice Bergeron's team-leading 3.75.
  
  Whether or not he can translate that to a full-time NHLer or not remains to be seen, but Kuhlman plays with pace and can give your line a jolt of energy when necessary. He's also signed for just $725,000 and will be a restricted free agent at the end of that deal.

• 3. Jeremy Lauzon

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  Boston’s top left-side killer following the team’s decision to move on from Zdeno Chara last offseason, the 6-foot-2 Lauzon established career-bests in games (41), points (eight), plus-minus (plus-8), hits (98), blocks (53), and time on ice (18:43 per night) in 2021. He also suffered game-missing injuries to both hands, and finished the postseason playing with a splint.
  
  That postseason came with true growing pains moments for the 24-year-old, too, as he had a straight-up disastrous Game 2 effort against the Islanders in round two. Overall, Lauzon was on the ice for 11 of the 24 goals the Bruins surrendered during Lauzon's seven-game playoff run.
  
  But this was also a baptism by fire kind of season for Lauzon, as he averaged 15.49 defensive-zone starts per 60 minutes of all-situation play, which was second to only the Panthers' MacKenzie Weegar (15.83) among the group of 158 NHL defensemen with at least 700 minutes played in 2021.
  
  Lauzon is signed for 2021-22 at $850,000.

• 2. Nick Ritchie

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  A clean slate was exactly what Nick Ritchie needed in 2021. After he struggled to make much of an impact in his first Boston run in 2020, Ritchie arrived to camp and took everything the Bruins said to him to heart and delivered with a career-best 15 goals, and was actually the only Bruin to suit up for all 56 games during the regular season.
  
  One thing that was outright crazy about Ritchie's 2021 season? His power-play production. One of 84 players to log at least 150 minutes of power-play action during the regular season, Ritchie tallied five power-play goals as the net-front presence on Boston's top unit, and finished the season with 1.95 goals per 60 minutes of power-play action, good for 35th-best among that group. That gave him a higher power-play goal scoring clip than Sidney Crosby, Artemi Panarin, and Brayden Point among others. Ritchie also put up a 1.89 individual expected power-play goals per 60, which ranked 25th among that group.
  
  But after finishing with five goals and an assist in 17 games down the stretch, the big-bodied Ritchie struggled to find his footing in the postseason, and seemed to struggle more the deeper the Bruins got, with four points in 11 games, including just one point in his final seven games of the playoffs. But in a West that's never short on the heavy, Ritchie could be a fit for the Kraken.
  
  Another potential connection between Ritchie and the Kraken: David Baseggio is the Kraken's director of pro scouting, and came to the Kraken after spending 12 seasons with the Anaheim Ducks front office. He knows quite a bit about Ritchie.
  
  Ritchie, of course, is a pending restricted free agent.
• 1. Connor Clifton

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  Right-shot defensemen are always at a premium in the NHL. And Clifton is actually one of just six right-shot NHL defensemen under contract for multiple years and available to Kraken in this year's expansion draft. Clifton is also the most affordable — he's making $1 million per year for the next two seasons — among that group of six, and he's the only one under 30 years old. (In case you're wondering, those six are Clifton, Kevin Shattenkirk, Erik Jonson, Radko Gudas, Shea Weber, and Nick Jensen.)
  
  But Clifton's value goes beyond term, affordability, and age.
  
  In action for 44 games this this past season, Clifton set career-best marks in assists (six), points (seven), plus-minus (plus-10), hits (108), blocked shots (52), and averaged a career-best 18:13 of time on ice per game. Clifton also did this playing a variety of roles for the Bruins, and had an extended run on the left side of Boston's second pairing.
  
  But it was in the playoffs where Clifton really rose to the occasion, as he played some excellent shutdown hockey in Boston's first-round win over Washington. That playoff experience is somewhat noteworthy, too, as Clifton's 36 playoff games since the start of the 2019 postseason actually ranks as the 28th-most in hockey.

Ty Anderson is a writer and columnist for 985TheSportsHub.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of 98.5 The Sports Hub, Beasley Media Group, or any subsidiaries. Yell at him on Twitter: @_TyAnderson.