Borgen Rising

During the first half of the Kraken's inaugural season, defenseman Will Borgen served as the seventh or even eighth defenseman. He didn't appear in a game until the Thanksgiving weekend in 2021 and notched his first assist for the team two nights later against Buffalo, the team from which he was selected by Seattle in the expansion draft.

Fittingly, he scored his first and only goal of the 2021-22 season on New Year's Day 2022. That's because once the trade deadline resulted in fellow expansion draft picks and defensemen Mark Giordano and Jeremy Lauzon playing for other teams, Borgen became a fixture in the Kraken lineup for the rest of the first season.

Borgen, 26, then broke out in a fashion that both Seattle GM Ron Francis and head coach Dave Hakstol projected. The 6-foot-3, 201-pound defenseman played all 82 regular season games along with the thrilling 14 Stanley Cup Playoffs contests. He was rewarded Friday when the Kraken announced Borgen agreed to terms on a two-year, $5.4 million contract with an average annual value of $2.7 million against the salary cap.

Borgen was one of 22 NHL players who was eligible for arbitration and selected the mediation step if he could reach a mutually acceptable contract as a restricted free agent. Both sides avoided that step Friday. For his part, Borgen stood out among NHL players in a much more meaningful way during the 2022-23 season.

He set career highs in goals (three) and assists (17) and showed his clearly underrated ability to join the offensive rush and especially shoot pucks net-front from this point position at the opposing teams' blue lines. He added a goal and two assists in the playoffs.

Borgen's 203 hits on the year rank second only to Adam Larsson, who averaged more than seven minutes more of time on ice than his teammate. Borgen blocked shots (89), fourth on the Kraken. Put those two stats together and you have an elite D-man in the making. He was one of 14 NHLers last season to record more than 200 hits and 80 blocked shots.

When Justin Schultz missed some games due to injury last fall, Borgen stepped in to partner with Jamie Oleksiak in the Kraken's second defensive pair. Hakstol and his coaching staff (including assistant coach Jay Leach, who spent many hours working with Borgen while the latter was serving as a reserve or "healthy scratch") liked what they saw in the Oleksiak-Borgen duo at both ends of the ice. When Schultz returned he paired up with the now departed Carson Soucy as what could be considered a second Kraken No. 2 pairing.

"We felt good about Will's progress, we felt good about his play and we were looking for the right time to look at Will and Oleksiak as a pair, then we had the opportunity," said Hakstol during an exclusive end-of-season interview about compensating for the injured Schultz. "That pair meshed together pretty well. It provided us with a shutdown pair to play against other teams' top groups.

"That's a challenging role to grow into for a young defenseman, and for a pair. Those two did a nice job over the year. Once they went together, they continued to grow and create better chemistry. They were effective."

Hakstol sees more potential in Borgen's game: "He's got room to grow within his game. We're gonna challenge him to do that over the summer and coming back into camp in the fall. But we really feel like he's coming out of a positive year, a good year performance-wise and taken a nice step forward for us."

Borgen's rise speaks to how players are developed into NHL regulars. With Buffalo, he played 14 games over three seasons from 2018 to 2021 before the Kraken tabbed him as the expansion pick, setting off quite the firestorm on social media after with Buffalo upset that the young, physical, high-motor Borgen was left unprotected.

His timeline to get to the NHL: Borgen played 140 games with the Rochester Americans, Buffalo's American Hockey League affiliate, from 2017-18 to 2019-20. Prior to making his pro debut, Borgen played three NCAA seasons (2015 to 18) at St. Cloud State, where he posted 41 points (five goals, 36 assists) in 106 games. Borgen was named to the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) All-Rookie Team in 2016 and was honored as the conference's best defensive defenseman in 2018.

The young defenseman, who grew up in Moorhead, MN, won a bronze medal while representing the United States at the 2016 World Junior Championship and was on the roster for the 2018 U.S. Men's Winter Olympic team. Borgen was drafted by Buffalo in the fourth round (92nd overall) of the 2015 NHL Draft.

Kraken Agrees to Terms with Nine-Season Veteran Bellemare

In an effort to replenish forward depth plus fortify the penalty kill and boost the team's faceoff prowess, Kraken agreed to terms with French-born forward Pierre-Edouard on a one-year, $775,000 contract Friday. The 38-year-old forward notched 13 points (four goals, nine assists) in 73 regular-season games for the Tampa Bay Lightning last season and added a goal and an assist in six playoff games.

Bellemare has played wing and center in his nine seasons. He has posted a faceoff percentage of 51.4 percent over his career and has performed effectively on penalty kill units for Philadelphia, Vegas, Colorado and Tampa Bay. Bellemare is widely admired and respected by teammates and coaches around the league.

"We've seen him for three days and it feels like he's been here for three years," Lightning coach Jon Cooper told the Tampa Bay Times during the first week of Bellemare's first training camp in 2021. "That's how he's fit in here. The demeanor, the confidence that he carries, it fits well in our room."