Kraken Black

Lore & Background

When the NHL approved Seattle's expansion bid in 2018, the city had already been waiting for a team since the 1970s. The Kraken arrived not as a gentle debut but as a dark, coiling presence—black jerseys with green tentacle motifs, a logo that looked like it had been clawed out of the Pacific floor. The color choice was deliberate: Seattle is a city of overcast skies, of rain that turns the streets to ink, of a waterfront that feels ancient and slightly hostile. Black was the obvious, almost inevitable hue. It said: we are not a sunny, polished franchise. We are the thing under the ice.

The fan culture that grew around that black identity was immediate and ferocious. Climate Pledge Arena, perched in the industrial SoDo neighborhood with its exposed steel and concrete, became a cathedral of noise. Fans draped themselves in black hoodies, painted their faces, and turned every home game into a pressure chamber. The sea-green and gold accents—small splashes of color against the dominant dark—became talismans. A single green scarf in a sea of black jerseys. A gold pin on a black cap. The contrast was the point.

What made Kraken Black feel different from other NHL identities was the sense of collective authorship. This was a team built by fans as much as by an ownership group. The black was not imposed from a boardroom; it was adopted, worn, defended. In a city where identity is fluid and self-made, the Kraken's black became a shared language. You did not need to know the box score. You needed to know the color, the sound, the feeling of the arena shaking. That was enough to be one of them.

In Their Own Story

The rain had been falling since noon, a fine Seattle mist that turned the SoDo streets into a sheen of grey. Mara pulled her black Kraken hoodie tighter and stepped off the streetcar, the arena's dark facade looming ahead like a hull cut from the sea. Inside, the air was already thick—thirty thousand people exhaling, the smell of coffee and cold air and the faint metallic tang of fresh ice. She found her section, row 14, and set her thermos on the seat. The lights dimmed. The boards went black. And then the roar hit, a low, subsonic growl that started in the lower bowl and climbed, climbed, until the concrete above their heads vibrated and the glass of the upper deck rattled in its frame. The puck dropped. The Kraken was awake. And the black around her—every face, every scarf, every pair of skates laced tight—was not a color anymore. It was a current. It was the deep water, and they were all moving in the same direction, pulling something enormous up from the dark.

Reader's Guide

Climate Pledge Arena sits in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle, a converted industrial district of brick warehouses and exposed steel trusses. The building's interior is deliberately dark—concrete, charcoal, and black steel—so that when the lights come up on the ice, the contrast is electric. Sea-green and gold accents thread through the concourses, the signage, and the seating, but the dominant impression is of a deep, enclosed space, almost submarine. The ice surface is standard NHL dimensions, and the boards are wrapped in the team's black-and-green branding.

The most recognizable fan tradition is the collective roar—often called the Kraken Call—that erupts during key moments: a goal, a big save, the face-off after a timeout. It is not a scripted chant with fixed lyrics so much as a full-throated, sustained growl that builds from the lower bowl and rolls upward through the upper deck. Fans lean forward, hands on the railing, and let the sound out of their chests. It is physical, communal, and unmistakably Seattle: no polish, just pressure.

The fanbase is as diverse as the city itself. You will find tech workers in black puffer jackets beside retired dockworkers in vintage green caps, families with toddlers in miniature Kraken jerseys, and lifelong hockey fans who drove four hours from Portland or Vancouver to be in the building. Seattle's identity—rain-soaked, independent, a little stubborn—bleeds into how the crowd behaves. They are loud, they are patient, and they wear the black like a second skin. You do not need to explain the team to someone in SoDo on a game night. The black on their shoulders says everything.

Did You Know?

• The Seattle Kraken were approved as an NHL expansion team in 2018 and played their first regular-season game in the 2021–22 season, ending a decades-long wait for a second professional hockey franchise in the Pacific Nor
• Climate Pledge Arena is located in Seattle's SoDo (South of Downtown) neighborhood, an area historically defined by rail yards, warehouses, and industrial manufacturing.
• The team's color palette—black, sea-green, and gold—was chosen to evoke the deep Pacific Ocean and the mythic sea creature that inspired the franchise name.
• Seattle had previously hosted the NHL with the Seattle Metropolitans, who won the Stanley Cup in 1917, making the 2021 arrival of the Kraken the city's return to professional hockey after more than a century.