Kraken have major repair job ahead. Here’s what’s coming up | Analysis

Now that the Kraken have a television solution that eliminates one barrier to growing their fan base, they must repair the on-ice product so anyone tuning in will keep watching.

Thursday’s replacing of the team’s ROOT Sports deal with over-the-air “free” broadcasts on KING 5/KONG and Amazon Prime streaming was just the start of a major Kraken repair job. General manager Ron Francis must revamp a team that fell from contention with a month to go, finishing 34-35-13 with the NHL’s fourth-worst offense.

That starts with looking beyond statistics to precisely gauge where it all went wrong.

“There are things that we deal with internally that aren’t out there,” Francis said at his season-ending news conference. “But it was just one of those years with some of those things that happened.”

Injuries, nonperformance, bad luck and questionable team preparation all resulted in the Kraken failing to replicate the prior season’s 100 points and playoff run deep into the second round.

Despite departures of fourth-line free agents Morgan Geekie, Daniel Sprong and Ryan Donato — who’d combined for 44 goals the prior season — the offensive drop-off was only partly because of just 23 goals by direct replacements Tye Kartye, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare and Kailer Yamamoto. Teams count on fourth lines more for checking and defense. Where the Kraken really faltered was declines above the fourth line.

Francis has already indicated higher-end offensive improvements will be sought, the obvious being one or two new top-line centers or wingers.

“We’ll look at every angle and the beauty is, we have the (salary) cap space,” Francis said. “So, we’re going to look at free agents. We’re going to look at possible trades with other teams.”

Top pending unrestricted free-agent forwards include Sam Reinhart, Jake Guentzel, Elias Lindholm, Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault. The Kraken don’t have much above-average talent to trade, meaning they’d likely need to move a popular player. Francis hasn’t ruled out dealing prospects from a growing pool that includes Wright, Jagger Firkus, Ryan Winterton, Logan Morrison, Ville Ottavainen, Carson Rehkopf, David Goyette and Jani Nyman.

Francis said top-scorer Jared McCann appears better suited on the wing after experimenting at center, meaning the team could import a centerman in addition to incoming AHL prospect Wright.

Less obvious than adding talent is figuring out how the team’s overall mindset and approach played into the downfall.

The first issue is the future of coach Dave Hakstol and assistants. Francis said a coaching-staff evaluation remains ongoing, presumably exploring uncomfortable topics such as a terrible opening start that doomed the Kraken into playing catch-up all season.

Coaches spent the preseason messaging Kraken players that last spring’s playoff run would see opponents better prepared for them. Yet they started 1-4-1 and scored one goal or fewer in five…