Seattle Kraken must make tough decisions before the regular season.

The Seattle Kraken have yet to play a single regular season game in the National Hockey League but the league's newest franchise may soon have some decisions to make in spite of that.

One of the notable strategies employed by the Kraken during their inaugural expansion draft into the NHL was to stack up on a number of defensemen that had at least some level of experience in the NHL, but that strategy has now put them in a position where they could very well be losing some of those players. Now to be clear there is still time between now and when these final decisions will have to be made but, during the inaugural episode of his podcast, NHL insider Chris Johnston revealed that rival teams in the NHL may be anticipating that some defensemen will soon be available for little to no cost.

"I think that does set up something interesting though that teams will be watching as camp goes along, is that it is very unclear which players will fill out the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, spot on the team as we're starting camp," said Johnston on his podcast.

Although Johnston acknowledge that the Kraken have no issues when it comes to the salary cap, he did highlight the fact that this abundance of depth on the Kraken roster could create a different kind of problem for the league's newest franchise.

"All those players would have to clear waivers to be sent down to the American Hockey League," said Johnston. "So Seattle doesn't have a cap problem, they would have room for any mix of the 23 players that end up making their opening night roster. But they are gonna put 3 defensemen most likely... that I think other teams are gonna be looking at on the waiver wire some time between now and October 13th."

Seattle Kraken head coach Dave Hakstol has been adamant that every player coming into camp is going to get a fair crack at making the team in spite of their previous history in the league. For this reason it is impossible to predict which players will likely hit the waiver wire prior to the start of the regular season, but it certainly sounds like it will include multiple members of the Kraken's roster.