Kraken

Lore & Background

Seattle's relationship with hockey stretches back to the Seattle Totems of the 1970s, but for nearly five decades the city watched the sport from the outside—through TV broadcasts, through the memories of a generation that grew up with the Totems, through the slow build of a youth hockey infrastructure that never quite had a professional outlet. When the NHL awarded Seattle an expansion franchise in 2018, the reaction was not merely excitement; it was a release. Years of pent-up identity found a vessel.

The Kraken, as a name and as a symbol, was chosen to evoke something vast and hidden beneath the surface of the Pacific. The team's black-and-purple palette, the tentacled mascot that slithers across the ice between periods, the way the arena's lighting shifts to deep oceanic tones—every design choice reinforces the idea that this is a team born from the water, from the pressure, from the dark. The fanbase adopted this mythology with an almost religious devotion, treating the arena not as a stadium but as a trench, a place where the deep things surface.

What distinguishes Kraken fan culture from other NHL markets is the sense of firstness. These are fans who did not inherit a tradition; they are building one in real time. There is no 'the way it's always been done.' Every ritual, every chant, every tradition is being written in the present tense, and that gives the culture a participatory, democratic energy that older franchises sometimes lack. The fans are not spectators; they are co-authors of a story still being told.

In Their Own Story

The rain has been falling since noon, that fine Pacific Northwest mist that never quite commits to a downpour. Inside Climate Pledge Arena, the humidity is different—thick, electric, charged with the breath of seventeen thousand people who arrived in waterproof jackets and left them in their cars. The ice is fresh, the Zamboni's grooves still visible under the floodlights. A puck sits at center ice, black against white, a small dark eye in a vast pale world.

The home team skates out to a sound that is less a cheer and more a pressure wave, a low collective exhalation that starts in the lower bowl and rolls upward like a swell. Someone in the third row has a hand-painted sign: a tentacle curling around a hockey stick. A kid in a too-big black jersey presses his face to the glass, breath fogging the plexiglass. The arena lights dim. The purple glow takes over. And for a few seconds, the only sound is the wet slap of skates on ice and the distant, muffled thrum of the crowd, like the ocean heard from very far below the surface.

Reader's Guide

Climate Pledge Arena sits in Seattle's SoDo district, a modern multi-sport venue that also hosts the Seattle Sounders and Seattle Storm. For hockey, the seating configuration drops fans close to the ice, with the lower bowl feeling intimate and the upper tiers creating a steep, amphitheater-like wall of noise. The concourses are wide, the sightlines clean, and the arena's interior design leans into the team's oceanic identity—dark surfaces, purple accent lighting, and subtle wave motifs on the dasher boards.

The most distinctive fan tradition is the collective roar that builds on every Kraken goal and key save, often punctuated by a unified call that rolls through the stands like a wave cresting. The energy is less structured than a stadium chant and more like a crowd finding its own rhythm in real time. Fans frequently wear the black-and-purple palette head to toe, and the mascot—a large, playful sea creature—makes between-period appearances that draw especially loud reactions from families in the lower bowl.

The fanbase reflects Seattle's diversity: young families, lifelong hockey fans who waited decades, college students from nearby UW, and a strong contingent of Sounders and Storm fans who crossed over. The local identity is one of patience and quiet intensity—Seattle fans do not need to be the loudest in the league; they need to be the most relentless. In a city of rain and coffee and long winter nights, a hockey game is an event, a ritual, a small defiance of the grey.

Did You Know?

• Seattle had no NHL team between the departure of the Seattle Totems in the mid-1970s and the Kraken's inaugural 2021–22 season, a gap of roughly five decades.
• Climate Pledge Arena is a shared-venue facility, hosting not only the Kraken but also the Seattle Sounders (MLS) and the Seattle Storm (WNBA).
• The Kraken's name and mascot draw on Pacific Northwest maritime mythology, and the team's design language—black, purple, silver—evokes the deep ocean rather than the surface.
• The franchise was awarded to Seattle as part of NHL expansion in 2018, making the Kraken one of the league's newest active teams.