‘It was a good day’: Kraken players, fans revel in excitement generated by start of first training camp

Cheers erupted from the stands and inwardly among players as Seattle’s newest professional sports team took the ice Thursday morning for the opening of the Kraken’s inaugural training camp.

The crowd of 400 watching the early session of a two-group set of practices had received a limited allotment of free tickets, leaving the 1,000-capacity main rink at the Kraken Community Iceplex in Northgate less than half full.

Despite the reduced crowd size, which was intentional for social-distancing reasons due to COVID-19, the fans made up for it with enthusiasm.

“It was awesome,” said Mark Giordano, the longtime former Calgary Flames captain who turns 38 next month. “Coming out, there were fans watching practice and cheering us through the drills. So it was a great atmosphere.”

Giordano, like several of his younger teammates, admitted feeling “excited to come to the rink” when he woke up ahead of his first official day with a new team. Excited enough, in fact, to lead teammates on a dreaded “bag skate” — the equivalent of running wind sprints indefinitely on skates — typically reserved as punishment by coaches.

This time, it was merely part of training-camp conditioning. But Kraken coach Dave Hakstol let players know before Thursday’s workouts he expects up-tempo, aggressive play throughout camp and the season.

“He told us just to come out here with a lot of intensity, a lot of pace and compete,” Giordano said. “And I think guys did that today. It was a good day.”

Not all 44 invited players took the ice, with the Kraken revealing that absent winger Colin Blackwell is day-to-day because of an undisclosed lower body injury. But center Yanni Gourde, recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, was out skating in drills wearing a red “no-contact” sweater, and it’s now thought his anticipated November-December return will be on the earlier side.

It became apparent right away that intensity and up-tempo pacing would be a running camp theme, as groups of players took part in a drill requiring them to make a series of short passes in tight space. From there came a quick transition drill of stretch passes and shot attempts at both ends of the ice on goalies Philipp Grubauer and Joey Daccord.

“When you watched that first drill, the guys were so excited they didn’t even know who to pass it to,” Grubauer, the prized free-agent goalie signed away from Colorado, said with a chuckle.

Hakstol and general manager Ron Francis want to see how players respond to working in tight spaces. Much of hockey comes down to offensive players getting into dangerous shooting positions as close to the net as possible and defenders preventing opponents from doing the same.

The Kraken’s brain trust wants a team that out-hustles and out-checks opponents at both ends of the rink and in the neutral zone. And with limited time to gauge a new squad ahead of Sunday’s first preseason game against the Vancouver Canucks in Spokane, Hakstol incorporated elements of his desired style within the initial practice drills — particularly, tight-spaced play and a quick transition game from defense to offense.

Hakstol also wasted little time juggling potential line combinations in search of chemistry. He had forward Jared McCann centering expected top-line wingers Jaden Schwartz and Jordan Eberle in the morning session. Then, in the latter practice with a second group of players, Alex Wennberg was centering a line with Swedish countrymen Calle Jarnkrok and Marcus Johansson.

‘We’ve only got a certain amount of time,” Hakstol said. “So what we’d like to do is put certain combinations together and see what that chemistry looks like. In order to see that, you have to give it two or three days to build together — possibly even leave it together through one exhibition game — and then you have the opportunity to look at a different combination.”

Hakstol said the message he delivered pre-workouts was simple: Be at the right competitive level, play with pace, and push one another.

And his players, he said, came ready to do that. Hakstol, long known for being the earliest to arrive at rinks ahead of workouts, admitted he’d “circled this date” on his calendar as a critical franchise milestone and had gotten to the Iceplex before sunrise.

But he wasn’t alone.

“I wasn’t the first at the rink, I can tell you that,” he said. “Everybody was here early. Everybody was excited to get going.”

And once they did, the fans, many clad in Kraken gear, helped keep the players pumped. Once the hourlong public session on the main practice rink was done, the players left the ice and walked over to the middle of three ice surfaces at the complex to resume working out with no one in attendance.

As they left, the fans stood and saluted them. It was a scene that repeated itself during both the early and latter practice sessions, and players were quick to notice.

Even in the more-private drills conducted without fans on the middle rink, the upper-level windows above the ice surface were lined with spectators peering through the glass from a Starbucks store within the new complex.

“I’ll bet that if you watched the practice you saw a lot of smiles,” Kraken center Wennberg, selected from Florida in the expansion draft, said after the later workout. “Even though it was hardworking, everyone was just so excited. Just to see people watching us here was well. It’s been a blast so far.”