Seattle Awarded 32nd NHL Franchise 2018

Lore & Background

Seattle's hockey story had been a ghost story for four decades. The North Stars played their final Seattle home game in 1976, and the city watched from the sidelines as the franchise became the Minnesota North Stars and later the Dallas Stars. Generations of fans grew up on radio echoes, on the memory of the old Kingdome, on a sport that belonged to Vancouver, to Calgary, to every other Pacific city except their own. The expansion bid that arrived in the NHL's office in 2017 carried the weight of that silence.

The Board of Governors' affirmative vote in the summer of 2018 was met with a spontaneous, city-wide celebration that spilled onto the streets around the arena. Dave Cameron, a Seattle-born businessman, had spent years courting the league and assembling a partner group rooted in the local community. The approval was not merely a business transaction; for many residents it was a homecoming to a sport they had loved but never been allowed to play at the highest level.

The naming process that followed became a civic event in its own right. Fans submitted entries, debated, voted, and ultimately settled on 'Kraken'—a name evoking the deep Pacific waters off the Puget Sound, the city's maritime heritage, and a creature that is equal parts myth and menace. The identity was deliberately Pacific, deliberately Seattle, deliberately not a rebrand of any defunct predecessor. The Kraken were their own thing, born from salt water and forty-two years of waiting.

In Their Own Story

The arena was still half-empty when the lights came up for the first time under the new name. A single puck sat at center ice, black against the white, and the Zamboni had just finished its last pass, leaving a faint sheen that caught the overhead floodlights. Dave Cameron stood in the tunnel with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching a line of players lace their skates in the warm-up area. The sound was specific—the dry crack of a blade biting into the ice, the hollow thud of a stick tapping a board. A kid in the third row, maybe eight years old, pressed his face to the glass and whispered something to his mother. She didn't look up from her phone. But the kid kept whispering, and the sound carried, just barely, under the hum of the refrigeration unit, under the distant traffic on the I-5 overpass. The puck was still at center ice. The game hadn't started. But the city had, in a very real sense, already won.

Reader's Guide

1976 – The Seattle North Stars play their final home games and relocate to Minnesota, leaving the Pacific Northwest without an NHL team for the first time.

2017 – A Seattle-based ownership group, led by Dave Cameron, submits a formal expansion bid to the NHL, joining a competitive process that also includes a Las Vegas application.

June 2018 – The NHL Board of Governors votes to award both Seattle and Las Vegas expansion franchises. Seattle becomes the 32nd team in league history. Celebrations erupt around the downtown arena.

2019 – After a public fan-voting process, the team officially adopts the name 'Seattle Kraken.' The identity—deep teal, gold, and a cephalopod motif rooted in Pacific maritime lore—is unveiled to the public.

2020 – The pandemic delays the construction and operational timeline. The team completes its organizational build-out, drafts its first players, and prepares for a compressed debut season.

October 2021 – The Seattle Kraken play their first regular-season game, entering the Western Conference's Pacific Division. The franchise is now a full, competing member of the NHL after a 45-year absence of Seattle hockey at the top level.

Did You Know?

• Seattle went without an NHL team for 42 years after the North Stars left in 1976, making the Kraken's arrival one of the longest expansion gaps in league history.
• The team name 'Kraken' was selected through a public fan-voting process, giving the community a direct hand in shaping the franchise identity.
• Seattle was awarded its franchise in the same Board of Governors vote that created the Vegas Golden Knights, making 2018 the only year two expansion teams were approved simultaneously.
• The home arena, Climate Pledge Arena, sits in the same downtown Seattle neighborhood where the North Stars played in the 1970s, linking the new franchise to the city's original hockey era.