Kraken Extend Qualifying Offers to Kakko, Kartye, and Evans

By Jayd Serdy, edited by Charles Hamaker

Seattle, WA - Ahead of Free Agency opening up on July 1st at 9AM pacific time, clubs were required to extend a ‘Qualifying Offer’ to any Restricted Free Agents that they would like to retain signing rights to by 2PM pacific time on June 30th. What this means, in a nutshell, is that the team will continue to hold signing rights to an RFA (Restricted free agent), should that player be ‘offer sheeted’ the team can match the deal, thus signing the player to a contract extension.

Our Seattle Kraken, in typical fashion, waited until 2PM pacific time on Monday afternoon to issue qualifying offers to restricted free agents Kaapo Kakko, Ryker Evans and Tye Kartye.

Seattle Kraken forward Kaapo Kakko during games played at Climate Pledge Arena in the 2025 calendar year. (Photos by Rio Giancarlo for Circling Seattle Sports)

Kaapo Kakko, a mid-season acquisition in a trade that sent defenseman Will Borgen to the New York Rangers, broke out of his shell over the 2024-25 season after arriving in Seattle. He posted ten goals and 20 assists over 49 games played in Seattle colors. If you combine his season with the Rangers and Seattle, he had a career-high year in points with 44 points (14 goals and 30 assists) over 79 games with his assist tally also coming in as a career high. Kakko spent most of his time in Seattle on a line with Matty Beniers and Jaden Schwartz where he was able to generate shooting chances, score goals and flourish in his game in a way that he hadn't before.

The 24-year old seemed to find a nice form during his time with the Kraken and can surely only get better with the expanded opportunity that Seattle can provide him with, as one of their bigger forwards. Kakko’s assist numbers truly flourished in Seattle, ranking high in the leagues forward percentiles as his playmaking was showcased. Here’s hoping that the Kraken and general manager Jason Botterill can get something done with the Finnish forward.

Seattle Kraken defenseman Ryker Evans during games played at Climate Pledge Arena in the 2025 calendar year. (Photos by Rio Giancarlo for Circling Seattle Sports)

Defenseman Ryker Evans was selected 35th overall by the Seattle Kraken in the 2021 NHL Entry Draft and spent the better part of two seasons developing with AHL affiliate Coachella Valley Firebirds before spending the entirety of the 2024-25 season with the Kraken. Throughout his first full NHL season, Evans scored five goals and notched 20 assists throughout 79 games played, seeing big jumps in every stat as he nearly doubled the number of games that he played in. He still has some room to improve his game as he matures and time goes on, as he showed some strong potential as a puck moving defenseman, but last season did see Evans take a bit of a dip in production and overall quality of play.

Per HockeyStatCards, his offensive rating ranked at a -4.9, horrible looking for a defenseman who is viewed as being a strong player on the offensive end for his position, and his defensive rating sat at -2.1 Not only was his offensive game, something that gave him an advantage over other defenseman in the Seattle prospect pool, struggling but he also wasn’t having the best year doing what his position actually requires. His shooting assist, and hit numbers all were strong percentile wise, but every other statistic didn’t rate very well at all. Here’s hoping that Lane Lambert’s defensive system helps Evans get back to what he can be.

Seattle Kraken forward Tye Kartye during games played at Climate Pledge Arena in the 2025 calendar year. (Photos by Rio Giancarlo for Circling Seattle Sports)

The third and final player to receive a qualifying offer from the Kraken is forward Tye Kartye, who was signed by Seattle as a free agent in 2022. He spent his first season in the organization in Coachella Valley before moving to a full time NHL role with the Kraken after showing some great promise during the 2022-23 playoffs when he had to fill in for an injured Jared McCann starting in the first round series against the Colorado Avalanche. Over 63 games in the 2024-25 season, he tallied just 13 points with six goals and seven assists. He was reassigned to the Firebirds for three games where he scored two goals and two assists in what could be classified as one of the “resets” that previous head coach Dan Bylsma used to try and get more out of some Kraken players when they struggled this past season.

Kartye is in a tough position. His strong shot, something that Dan Bylsma previously highlighted as a quality in Kartye’s game, is something that hasn’t been utilized as much considering that he’s largely been in a fourth line role the last two seasons. It’s different than what he was asked to do when he came up to fill in for an injured McCann, taking a more offensive based top six approach which is drastically different than what he’s been asked to do since then. It’ll be interesting to see what the Kraken can do to get more out of Kartye going forward, as it doesn’t appear that there is a clear avenue to a larger role for him.

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• Check out our previous Seattle Kraken articles here.

• Check out our previous articles with writing by Jayd Serdy here, and follow her on twitter here.

• Check out our previous articles with photos by Rio Giancarlo here, and his portfolio here.

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