The Seattle Kraken announced Sunday that Jared McCann will miss 10 weeks with a lower-body injury and placed him on injured reserve. That is the entire disclosure. Lower body. Ten weeks. No joint, no mechanism, no surgery timeline.
For the leading scorer in franchise history, in the middle of the best start the Kraken have ever had, that is a remarkably small amount of information.
What Actually Happened
McCann was hurt in Seattle’s 5-3 win over the Utah Mammoth on Thursday. He played 16:42, a normal workload, and never left the game. He missed practice Friday to be evaluated, was ruled out Saturday against Minnesota, and was seen walking through Climate Pledge Arena on crutches after that morning’s skate.
Coach Lane Lambert was asked Saturday how long McCann would be out and gave an answer that reads differently now. “I don’t have any idea,” he said. “Well, I have somewhat of an idea.” He added that he hoped it was not long term. The 10-week number arrived in a written team statement the next day, attributed to nobody in particular.
Ten weeks from Sunday lands on Jan. 3. Seattle plays roughly 28 games in that window, including the two-game Global Series set against Carolina in Helsinki on Nov. 12 and Nov. 14.
Seattle Loses Its Most Important Forward
McCann is 30 and had eight points in 11 games, three goals and five assists, with a plus-5 that led the team. Two of his three goals came on the power play. He was tied for the team lead in scoring when he got hurt.
The longer view matters more. McCann has 291 points in 378 games for Seattle, the most in franchise history. He is the only Kraken player to score 40 goals in a season, which he did in 2022-23 along with a career-high 70 points. He has scored at least 20 goals in all five seasons the franchise has existed, and he has won the team MVP award twice.
He is also on an expiring contract. The five-year, $25 million extension he signed in March 2022, the first in team history, runs out in July 2027 and carries a $5 million cap hit. A 30-year-old winger losing 28 games in his contract year, a year after missing 30 with lower-body problems, is not a good sequence for anyone involved.
Who Absorbs It
Lambert moved Kaapo Kakko onto the top line with Matty Beniers and captain Jordan Eberle for Saturday’s game. Ryan Winterton moved up off the fourth line. Jani Nyman, 22, was recalled from AHL Coachella Valley, where he has been scoring at a league-leading clip, then sat as a healthy scratch while Curtis Douglas took the open spot.
Seattle lost that Minnesota game 5-1 and sits 7-4-1 with 15 points, third in the Pacific. The scoring has been real: 45 goals, eighth in the league, from a team that finished 28th in goals per game last season and missed the playoffs for a third straight year. Eberle, Chandler Stephenson and Kakko all have nine points. Berkly Catton has nine. This group is deeper than any Kraken team has been.
It still has to survive two and a half months without the best goal scorer the franchise has produced, and nobody in Seattle has said what it is actually dealing with. Jason Botterill chose not to overhaul this roster last summer. That decision is about to get tested.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
