Yesterday, the most anticipated trade of the 2025-26 season finally happened. The New York Rangers traded Artemi Panarin to the Los Angeles Kings for Liam Greentree and a 2026 third-round pick. Shortly after the deal was announced, the Kings revealed they had signed Panarin to a two-year, $22 million contract. That carries an AAV of $11 million. As a result, he is the highest-paid forward on the team.
Today, there were some rumblings about teams that had interest in Panarin before he was dealt to LA. But with Panarin making it clear that he only wanted to go to the Kings, those teams were taken out of the running relatively early. Still, one report involving the Seattle Kraken caught a lot of attention. According to reports, the Kraken offered Panarin a four-year deal with an AAV of $14 million per season. That would have tied him with Edmonton Oilers star Leon Draisaitl as the second-highest-paid player in the NHL next season. Some wonder if the offer was even higher.
So the obvious question becomes: did the Kraken really believe Panarin was worth the same, or more, than one of the best players in the world?
Kraken Make Massive Offer to Panarin
When a player like Panarin makes it clear he wants to join only one team, the team that currently holds his rights will usually still do its due diligence. That means checking around the league to see if there is a better offer they can take back to the player. This appears to be what the Rangers did here. It was reported that the Kraken were willing to offer Panarin betwwen $56 and $60 million over four years. If Panarin had agreed to that deal, it would have likely resulted in a trade between the Rangers and Kraken. That trade probably would have included Shane Wright heading to New York.
Obviously, that never materialized. Now, fans are left wondering why Seattle felt comfortable going that high in the first place. Panarin is not a better player than Draisaitl, and honestly, (outside of Draisaitl’s rookie year), he never has been at any point in his career. Draisaitl has firmly established himself as a top-three player in the NHL. While $14 million per year is a massive number, it makes sense in his case. He flirts with 50 goals, puts up over 100 points, and consistently helps drive his team into the playoffs.
Panarin doesn’t quite check those same boxes. The most goals he has ever scored in a season are 49, which came back in 2022-23. He has only topped 100 points once in his career. And when the Rangers started to slide down the standings, he wasn’t able to pull them back on track. He isn’t a true play driver and doesn’t control games the way elite franchise players do, especially at this stage of his career. At $14 million per season, Seattle would have been paying that contract until Panarin was 38, going on 39. When you look at it through that lens, it might actually be a blessing in disguise for the Kraken that he didn’t take the offer.
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