“I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of setting up champions as a player and an executive,” Botterill said. “I’ve been part of organizations that have had success. And in my mind, the pieces are here for the Kraken to have success in the future.”
Francis agreed Botterill will have the final decision on what those moves and the Kraken roster wind up looking like.
“I feel strongly that if we’re asking Jason to step into the GM chair and manage all those responsibilities, that he will have the final say on all decisions,” Francis said. “We will have discussions. I will give him my opinion. I know it won’t be 100% where we will live in agreement all the time.
“But we will have the discussions and at the end of the day, he will make the decision – the final call.”
For Francis, 62, the move to the presidency follows the trend of roughly a dozen other NHL teams dividing up the increasingly complex GM task.
“In the league today, there are a lot more demands in the GM chair,” Francis said ahead of Tuesday’s announcement. “And teams that I’ve talked to about this, in their experience it is a stronger model with two guys working together and trying to get things right.”
Tuesday’s move was unrelated to the Kraken decision Monday to relieve head coach Dan Bylsma of his duties.
Kraken CEO Tod Leiweke said at Tuesday’s conference these were “tough decisions” when it came to letting Bylsma go.
“The path of least resistance for both these guys and the owners was to do nothing on the coaching side,” Leiweke said. “But they felt we could do better. They thought the move could actually move us closer to winning faster.”
Botterill will head up the search for Bylsma’s replacement. The team says assistant coach Jessica Campbell will remain with the organization but decisions on the rest of the coaching staff will come later.
“Ron and myself will put a list together here,” Botterill said of finding a new head coach. “And we’ll certainly begin interviewing people and going through that process and then continue to evaluate the situation from there.”
Botterill feels the team must regain the “speed game” it showed in making the playoffs two years ago. But he didn’t stop there.
“If you look at the areas for improvement, I’m not going to say size I’m just going to say strength,” said Botterill, a onetime 6-foot-4, 220-pound power forward. “We have to find ways to do a better job in front of our own net. And find ways of doing a better job of getting to the opposition net. Those are areas we just haven’t gotten to.”
And just as Francis did at the March 7 trade deadline, Botterill vowed to use all means – trades, free agency, draft capital and salary cap space – to start bringing in needed player improvements this summer. He said the “development of skill across the board” also must continue regardless of where the Kraken finish in the standings.
“We have to continue to improve in all areas,” he said. “It’s not as if we’re one player away from a Stanley Cup championship. We have to become a perennial playoff team first and then find our way.”
Botterill and Francis previously worked together as co-GMs for Team Canada’s silver medal squad at the 2019 IIHF World Hockey Championship.
For the Kraken, striving to build a sustained playoff team, having Francis as president enables him to devote more energy to some of the broader scope business side of things. Victor de Bonis remains team president of business operations, but the Kraken also has a president on the hockey side, enabling both aspects of the franchise to become increasingly aligned.
Perhaps the most notable of teams for which such a dual arrangement bred success was GM George McPhee becoming president of the Vegas Golden Knights after their second season and turning much of his prior function over to assistant Kelly McCrimmon. The Golden Knights went on to capture the Stanley Cup four years after that switch in 2023.
Francis said he consulted with several teams, including the Golden Knights, about such arrangements the past two years. He hopes the new model allows Botterill to focus on the day-to-day of the NHL team, while giving him more opportunity to focus on Coachella Valley, work with team prospects and spend more time with Kraken pro scouts.
Kraken owner Samantha Holloway said she’s proud of what the organization has accomplished in launching the team, building first-class facilities and being a presence in the community through its One Roof Foundation non-profit wing, the Community Iceplex and other endeavors. But Holloway now wants a sustained playoff team to align in conjunction with that.
“I think the organization is obviously bigger than what we do on the ice and I’m very proud of what we’ve done here in this community,” Holloway said. But she quickly added: “I think that last step – and the most important step – is to get to where we want to be on-ice.
“So, it’s to be a sustained playoff team. And it’s as soon as possible.”
