One day after firing coach Dan Bylsma, the Seattle Kraken shook up their front office on Tuesday, moving Ron Francis from general manager to president of hockey operations and installing Jason Botterill as the new GM and executive vice president.
Francis recently finished his fourth season as GM. Botterill had served as one of his three assistants.
The massive changes took place days after the Kraken, in their fourth season of existence, finished seventh in the Pacific Division with 76 points, 20 points behind the St. Louis Blues for the Western Conference’s final wild-card slot. Only three teams finished with fewer points.
Bylsma lasted only one season as coach, and while Kraken CEO and president Tod Leiweke said recently that Francis would remain with the Kraken, he did not specify if that would be as the GM.
“We’re going to look at every doggone thing here,” Leiweke told The Athletic last week when speaking about the franchise’s year-end meetings. “Ron is with us, and I recruited the guy. I’d go to war with him every day of the week.”
Before joining the Kraken, Francis had been hired by the Carolina Hurricanes as director of hockey operations (2011), then promoted to general manager (2014), then moved to president of hockey operations and fired (both in 2018). Now, he takes on the newly created role of president of hockey operations with the Kraken.
We are proud to announce that Ron Francis has been elevated to President of Hockey Operations, and the #SeaKraken have named Jason Botterill Executive Vice President & General Manager. pic.twitter.com/VGNf0zRfMf
— Seattle Kraken (@SeattleKraken) April 22, 2025
Botterill, who joined the Kraken before their inaugural season as one of Francis’ assistants, will play a bigger role in attempting to raise them to championship contender status. Botterill, 48, is a former GM, having spent three seasons running the Buffalo Sabres’ hockey arm (2017-18 through 2019-20). Before that, Botterill spent more than a decade with the Pittsburgh Penguins, rising from director of hockey administration in 2007 to associate GM during a tenure that ended with his hiring by the Sabers in May 2017.
Botterill — who played 88 NHL games as a forward — was pivotal in shaping the Penguins’ three Stanley Cup championship teams of the salary-cap era. He ran the Penguins’ AHL team when it produced eventual 2016 and 2017 Cup-winning coach Mike Sullivan and players such as Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, and Matt Murray.
Now, Botterill will have a big say in Bylsma’s replacement, as Francis moves into a different role. The Kraken join several teams that have different people in the roles of president of hockey operations and GM. The most prominent example is the Colorado Avalanche, where former GM Joe Sakic was promoted to president of hockey operations in 2022, with his former assistant, Chris McFarland, taking over as GM.
The Kraken regressed in the standings in each of the past two seasons — a sharp contrast with the franchise to which it is often compared, the Vegas Golden Knights. Although the Golden Knights needed six seasons to win the Stanley Cup, they reached the Cup Final in their inaugural season and won at least one playoff round three times in their first four seasons.
The Kraken and Golden Knights approached their respective expansion drafts differently, with Vegas leveraging favorable rules to load up on future NHL Draft capital and also landing a probable Hockey Hall of Fame goalie in Marc-Andre Fleury in 2017.
Whether by choice or because league general managers had learned from the 2017 expansion draft, the Kraken took a more conservative approach to the 2021 expansion draft under Francis.
(Photo of Ron Francis: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)