Kraken fire coach Dan Bylsma and reassign GM Ron Francis, reports say

SEATTLE – For the second consecutive year, as the Stanley Cup playoffs roll on, the Kraken are on the outside and looking for a coach. They also will have a new general manager, according to a report.

After just one year in charge, coach Dan Bylsma was fired by the Kraken on Monday. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was the first to report the firing, which was confirmed by the Kraken in a team statement.

“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,” Kraken general manager Ron Francis said in the statement. “After a thorough review of the season and our expectations for next year and beyond, we’ve made the difficult decision to move in a different direction behind the bench. Dan is a great person and a respected coach. He played an important role in the development of many of our young prospects and was a big part of our early success in Coachella Valley. We sincerely wish him and his family nothing but success moving forward.”

Though the team statement referred to Francis as the GM, NHL Network’s E.J. Hradek reported that the team is “preparing to elevate (assistant general manager) Jason Botterill to the GM position.” The Athletic’s Arthur Staple reported that Francis will remain with Seattle as team president.

The Kraken declined to comment on Francis’ status Monday. The team is scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

Assistant coach Jessica Campbell, who last year became the first woman working full-time behind an NHL bench, will be retained. She helped oversee the Kraken’s power play, ranked 17th among 32 teams.

Bylsma and Campbell coached the Kraken’s American Hockey League affiliate, the Coachella Valley Firebirds, to back-to-back Calder Cup finals appearances before the coaches were promoted. Bylsma replaced Dave Hakstol, a coach of the year finalist in Seattle in 2023.

The Kraken (35-41-6) finished with a worse record this season than in Hakstol’s third and final season. They dropped five standings points to 76, 20 behind the second and last wild-card spot in the Western Conference. In Bylsma’s aggressive system, the Kraken scored more goals but allowed more — an average of 3.2 per game, ninth-most in the NHL.

Bylsma won the Stanley Cup as coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009. This was his third NHL head-coaching job and first since a brief stint with the Buffalo Sabres from 2015-17. His is part of a cluster of head-coach firings by teams that missed the postseason. On Saturday the Anaheim Ducks let go of Greg Cronin, and the New York Rangers dismissed Peter Laviolette.

The Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers ended the season with interim coaches. Bylsma is the eighth coach fired this season overall.

This isn’t a role with job security. There are only 10 coaches in the NHL who have surpassed the two-year mark, and that number could soon become nine. On Monday, Vancouver Canucks president hockey of operations Jim Rutherford announced that the team won’t exercise its contract option for coach Rick Tocchet, adding that the organization offered a new, more lucrative contract for him to remain in Vancouver. But he’s also free to join another team. The Canucks also missed the playoffs.

Reportedly the Kraken’s next GM, the 48-year-old Botterill played in 88 NHL games. He was a longtime assistant general manager of the Penguins and oversaw their AHL affiliate. He was the general manager of the Sabres for three seasons and was fired in 2020 before joining the Kraken organization about six months later, shortly before their inaugural season.

Francis wouldn’t be the first NHL GM promoted to make room for a fresh perspective. Soon after Denver’s Stanley Cup parade, Colorado Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic was named the team’s president of hockey operations in 2022. That cleared the way for new GM Chris MacFarland, who remains in the role and executed several major trades this season.

It’s not a new concept for the city of Seattle, either. In 2021 then-Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto was named president of baseball operations.

Francis is Seattle’s architect, and they want to keep him around, Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke confirmed the day of the season finale. In regard to the team, which has missed the playoffs three times in its four years, Leiweke said in February that he didn’t want to call this current phase a rebuild.

“When Ron started this out, he made a statement, saying the only way to do this long term is you’ve got to do it the hard way,” Leiweke said at a recent fan event. “And we signed on for that. And so we knew that this wasn’t going to be a straight line.”