The Seattle Kraken on Friday officially became the NHL’s 32nd team, with owners paying the final installment of a US$650 million expansion fee for a team who are to debut next season.
The NHL awarded an expansion club to the Seattle group in December 2018.
The Kraken are the first team to join the NHL since the Vegas Golden Knights for the 2017-2018 season.
Photo: AP
“On behalf of the board of governors, I am delighted to officially welcome the Seattle Kraken to the NHL as our 32nd member club,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said.
“The club continues on its exciting journey towards puck drop in October,” Bettman said.
Seattle Kraken majority owner David Bonderman thanked Bettman, the other club owners, his partners in the project and the fans who made deposits on tickets starting March 2018 to show interest in the NHL.
“Today is another momentous day on the journey to puck drop,” Bonderman said. “We have an incredible few months ahead of us as we prepare to welcome our inaugural players and finally take to the ice.”
The Kraken are now able to sign players and make trades.
The NHL is to stage an expansion draft for the Kraken on July 21, just ahead of the NHL draft on July 23 and 24.
Each current team can protect up to 11 players in the expansion draft, with Seattle able to take one player per club.
Those are the same rules in effect when Vegas were assembled in 2017.
The Golden Knights advanced to the 2018 Stanley Cup Final, losing to the Washington Capitals.
Kraken general manager Ron Francis has said he expects to have a coach hired by the end of next month.
Other investors in the Kraken include US film and television producer Jerry Bruckheimer and former NFL executive Tod Leiweke.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier