SEATTLE -- It won’t be a dream come true for Kailer Yamamoto to play for the Seattle Kraken in the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic.
When he grew up playing pond hockey in Spokane and travel hockey in Seattle, the state of Washington didn’t have an NHL team. No one thought about hosting an NHL outdoor game.
It was beyond imagination.
But the Kraken joined the NHL as an expansion team in 2021-22, Yamamoto signed with them as an unrestricted free agent July 2, and the 25-year-old forward will face the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Park on Monday (3 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS).
There will be local kids in the sellout crowd watching one of their own.
Maybe it will be a dream for them.
“Never in a million years did I think Seattle was going to get a team, and it means so much to me just to be able to grow the game of hockey,” Yamamoto said. “It means a lot that a team’s here. It shows kids in the Spokane area, the Seattle area, that they can make it.”
Seattle has a long hockey history.
It became the first city in the United States to win the Stanley Cup in 1917, when the Seattle Metropolitans of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association defeated the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey Association months before the NHL was founded.
Yamamoto said he had Metropolitans gear growing up.
But out of the 8,485 players who have appeared in an NHL regular-season game, only 13 have come from the state of Washington.
The Kraken have boosted interest and participation in hockey in the area since their arrival, from the three-sheet practice facility they opened in Seattle in their inaugural season to their first Stanley Cup Playoff run last season.
The Winter Classic should help. The spectacle will take place at the home of the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball, drawing hardcore hockey fans, casual sports fans and a national TV audience.
Already, fans are wearing Winter Classic gear.
“I think it’s huge,” said Chicago Blackhawks forward Tyler Johnson, a Spokane native. “I was really excited that Seattle was able to get an NHL team, and I think the fans and the city have really rallied behind them, and they’ve had some success. For them to have an outdoor game is going to be really fun.”
Yamamoto is the Kraken’s first player from their home state and even has the outdoor roots the Winter Classic romanticizes.
The weather generally isn’t cold enough in Seattle for ponds and outdoor rinks to freeze. The city was at the forefront of indoor hockey. Seattle Ice Arena, where the Metropolitans won the Stanley Cup less than two miles from where T-Mobile Park stands today, was one of the first facilities with artificial ice when built in 1915.
But Yamamoto was born in Spokane, about 280 miles east, where it’s plenty cold. He remembers playing shinny at Manito Park and on Newman Lake, skating with his dad, Russ, his brother, Keanu, and his buddies.
“It was just a really cool experience just to be able go outside and just play,” he said. “I just have good memories like that.”
Yamamoto played organized hockey in Spokane from ages 4 to 7, then travel hockey in the Seattle area from 8 to 11. His father would drive four hours each way -- when he wasn’t driving to, say, Vancouver for road games.
They were always looking for the best competition. Yamamoto played for teams as far away as Los Angeles as a teenager, living with a billet family, before joining Spokane of the Western Hockey League.
After putting up 99 points (42 goals, 57 assists) in 65 games for his hometown junior team in 2016-17, he was selected in the first round (No. 22) by the Edmonton Oilers in the 2017 NHL Draft.
He had 118 points (50 goals, 68 assists) in 244 games for Edmonton from 2017-23, setting NHL career highs in goals (20), assists (21) and points (41) in 81 games in 2021-22.
The Oilers traded Yamamoto and forward Klim Kostin to the Detroit Red Wings for future considerations June 29. The Red Wings bought out Yamamoto and released him July 1, making him an unrestricted free agent.
His agent asked him where he wanted to go if he had his choice.
“And I was like, ‘Well, Seattle, I mean, obviously,’” he said.
Yamamoto signed a one-year, $1.5 million contract with the Kraken and has 11 points (seven goals, four assists) in 37 games this season. He will have lots of family, friends and fans in the stands Monday.
“For them to get a team and then for me to play here, it’s pretty surreal,” he said. “And then, on top of that, to add an outdoor game, it’s insane right now.”
NHL.com staff writer Tracey Myers contributed to this report
