Bobby McMann Returns To Kraken ‘As Hungry As Ever’

Kraken winger Bobby McMann this month began his new life as a veteran NHL cornerstone by doing something he’s always loved. 

He arrived in town a few weeks ago ahead of Kraken Training Camp, pres. by Starbucks, threw on some hiking gear in his new Seattle rental home and headed outdoors to take advantage of some gorgeous late summer weather.  It turns out McMann was doing more than just some good local PR back in June when he signed a six-year, $34.5 million contract extension that should keep him with the Kraken for the majority of a remaining NHL career in many ways just getting started. 

McMann actually meant what he said about loving the city and its surroundings. 

“I caught some good weather, so I got out to Cougar Mountain and hiked up there and that was really nice,” said McMann, scored 10 goals in 18 games after being traded to the Kraken from Toronto in March, securing his biggest deal of a pro career a week after his 30th birthday. “Then, I checked out Bellevue a little bit. I’ve been in and out of downtown. I’ve just been enjoying the city a little bit – trying out some different spots and stuff and getting settled in.” 

This fresh taste of a more permanent hockey existence is uncharted territory for the native of tiny Wainright, Alberta, population 6,997, who’d spent much of his pro career in the minors until two seasons ago and is used to fighting for every roster spot ever given him. He went undrafted after four years at Colgate University despite being a team captain and nominee for the Hobey Baker Award as the nation’s top hockey collegian.  

Later, he toiled in the ECHL just to make it on to an AHL roster, finally cracking the NHL for 10 games with Toronto starting in January 2023. And he hasn’t stopped scoring ever since. McMann scored 15 goals in 74 contests for the Leafs his first full NHL season in 2023-24, 20 more in 70 games for Toronto in 2024-25 and the last season’s combined 29 goals in 78 games overall.  

He’d been on a two-year, $2.7 million deal with the Maple Leafs, but this Kraken extension gave him security long coveted. 

“It’s different,” McMann said. “I’ve always kind of worked as a little bit of the underdog. Never drafted, never got a contract out of college. I had to work for that. I had to earn my way all the way through. So, yeah. It’s kind of an entirely different scenario now from a contract and security standpoint. 

“But I’m just as hungry as ever. I recognize the way we finished last year wasn’t what we wanted. So, it’s just been trying to set a standard from the first day here all the way through the preseason.”

And now, starting Thursday night at home against Calgary, he’ll don a Kraken uniform for his first preseason game since the new deal.  

The Kraken on Monday made a load of cuts of mostly younger prospect players, including Jani Nyman, Ty Nelson, Jagger Firkus, Tyson Jugnauth, Julius Miettinen, Alexis Bernier, Lukas Dragicevic, Ryden Evers, David Goyette, Kaden Hammell, Andrei Loshko, Caden Price, Carson Rehkopf, Lleyton Roed, Eduard Sale and Nathan Villeneuve. All were assigned to AHL Coachella Valley while John Hayden, J.R. Avon, Logan Morrisson and Victor Ostman were put on waivers and need to clear in order to join the Firebirds as well. 

Prospects still in camp include Oscar Fisker Molgaard, Jake O’Brien, Ville Ottavainen and Nikke Kokko. They could see action the final two games, though it will mostly be Kraken regulars such as McMann filling out lineups from here as the team readies for its Oct. 1 season opener in Calgary.  

It’s only been a few weeks, but McMann likes his rental in a quiet neighborhood located inside Seattle’s city limits. He’s close to some restaurants and coffee houses and can hop over to Climate Pledge Arena in about 10 minutes. His girlfriend, Svetlana, plans to join him shortly as they begin a new season and life. 

All told, his 29 combined goals with the Kraken and Maple Leafs last season were three more than any player on his current team had. For a Kraken squad that finished with the NHL’s fifth worst offensive totals at 2.73 goals per game, the long-term addition of McMann is a key part of plans to keep the team competitive while awaiting continued development of top future goal-scoring prospects. 

McMann recognizes other Kraken vets have been here a while and he isn’t “trying to come in and disrupt anything.” But speed is his biggest attribute, so he’s worked hard to “push the pace” at practices thus far. 

“I’m not afraid of the work part of it,” he said. “I’m trying to push guys in the gym. Trying to push guys to push each other and be the best versions of themselves they can be.” 

His gym rat days stretch back to his time at Colgate, where he maintained strict diets and transformed his body with a powerful weight lifting regimen his teammates admired and emulated. 

He’d also show up at the arena hours before practice with his homework, a bagel to munch on and boundless energy that wouldn’t sit still. He’d try to get teammates to run up and down the arena stairs with him, then, once practices ended at 6:30 p.m., head home for dinner and return to the rink around 9 p.m. 

“He just really wanted to always tackle things he wasn’t good at,” said Dana Borges, a Colgate assistant coach when McMann played there from 2016-2020. “Really tackle his weaknesses and get at things.” 

Borges, now an assistant coach at Colorado College, had a close relationship with McMann and used to join him nights for workouts.  

“He just loved being at the rink and having the bucket of pucks by himself,” Borges said. “He was always just willing and wanting to do more.” 

Borges said McMann “changed the culture of the program” to where future players had a higher standard to meet. Colgate won its first ECAC championship in 2023, which Borges attributes, in part, to “Bobby and some of his teammates laying the foundation” years prior of how to operate. 

McMann, he added, had obvious talent and goal-scoring ability upon his arrival at the school. He’d been MVP of the second tier Alberta Junior Hockey League the previous season with the Bonnyville Pontiacs in 2016-16, scoring 36 goals in 32 games. But his name never seemed to carry the star power or respect other young hockey talents did. 

“I think sometimes it just goes unnoticed and kids slip through the cracks,” Borges said. “But he did a fantastic job of turning it around. He always had a great frame, but he turned his body into what it is now. He’s as strong and quick as anyone in the NHL and it’s because of his work ethic. He’s a pro’s pro.” 

McMann has continued pumping plenty of iron over the years with his 6-foot-2, 217-pound frame. He had a favorite gym about 15 minutes from his downtown Toronto apartment when he played for the Leafs and returned there to train this summer – albeit with a different trainer than his former team had previously paired him with plus a different set of workout goals in mind. 

“We worked on stuff that was very specific to me,” he said. “I've done a lot of weightlifting stuff. This is a little bit less of that and a little bit more dynamic movement. A lot of utilizing what I have to the best of my ability, rather than just piling the weight on and cranking it out. So it's working smart, not hard.”  

The Kraken liked the way McMann’s speed transformed their offense last spring and want him maximizing that quickness. They’d talked with him about it at season’s end when they got serious about a contract extension. 

McMann stuck around Seattle, wanting to find out as much as he could about the organization and people running it. Kraken head coach Lane Lambert, an associate coach with the Maple Leafs in 2024-25 when McMann had his 20-goal breakout season, invited the winger his Seattle home for an update on the team’s plans and where the winger fit.  

And then there was the city itself, which McMann and girlfriend Svetlana knew they might be committing to live in for years.

“We went around and tried a bunch of good food spots,” McMann said. “Kind of drove around the city and watched a few sunsets from some good vantage points. We had some clear days where we could see the mountains, the water. It was some really good nights and really good days. We did a few hikes. Went to Din Thai Fung (a world famous Taiwanese soup dumplings and noodle chain) quite a few times. That’s a great spot and so we’re happy about that. But yeah, we just kind of hung out and enjoyed the city.” 

It didn’t hurt that Kraken captain Jordan Eberle also wrote a message to him on a stick about wanting him to come back to the team. McMann had grown up in Alberta watching Eberle play for the Edmonton Oilers.  

“It’s not just him, our whole family knew who Jordan Eberle was,” said McMann’s sister, Jaclyn, eight years his senior. “I had a nephew who I bought an Eberle jersey for when Bobby was about 14 or 15 and that’s when you really get intense about hockey. He’s like, ‘I wish I could play in the NHL’ and, ‘I want to be like Jordan Eberle.’  

“So, now that jersey is a hand-me-down that my 2-year-old son wears. Eberle’s our favorite player. We were so happy when we saw he was on the team Bobby was going to play for.”

She and her other sister Cassie has maintained an extremely close relationship with their brother, for years serving as sounding boards and shoulders to lean on. Jaclyn and her husband, Matt, had a teenage Bobby move into their home when McMann was taking summer school courses to lighten his high school load during hockey season. 

McMann’s sister described Wainright as a typical small Alberta town, where her parents, Connie and Cecil, had to drive her brother an hour away to the town of Lloydminster so he could play on “AAA” instead of “AA” teams. Spring hockey tryouts and teams were often too far away, so when Bobby was 11 or 12, his dad helped set up a wooden backstop in his home driveway. Bobby began firing hundreds of pucks a day at it – eventually reaching 10,000 for the summer and needing to replace the  broken wood. 

He later moved on to an outdoor community rink with boards and a concrete floor at a military base next to their town to keep shooting there.  

“His shot was getting too hard for our driveway and he kept wrecking stuff,” his sister said.

There’d be plenty of parties and other teen gatherings around town, but McMann preferred his workout routines, eating right and getting to bed early as he focused on his hockey dreams. Those dreams didn’t always reciprocate right away. 

He was once cut trying out for a team competing at the annual Alberta Cup U15 tournament. Several of his teenage friends made it and a frustrated McMann watched them win the championship.  

At Colgate, he began as a rookie fighting for playing time and wound up the captain. 

When undrafted by the NHL, the Maple Leafs’ AHL Toronto Marlies affiliate signed him to a two-year, minor league deal and started him in the lower level ECHL due to their league being shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic. The following season, McMann assumed he’d make the AHL squad but got cut and sent to the ECHL once again. 

The demotion stung. Only a third of ECHL players ever make even an AHL roster and the odds against McMann’s NHL dream were starting to lengthen. He knew he needed to make the next level leap before becoming typecast as an ECHL lifer.  

“He just digs in and doubles down,” his sister said. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to get myself back. I’m going to get myself back. I’m going to get myself to that next level.’ He just kept believing that he could do it.” 

McMann spent only four games with the ECHL Newfoundland Growlers that second pro season before the Marlies eventually did call him up, saying he’d maybe see some lower line ice time. Instead, McMann set the AHL team’s rookie scoring record with 24 goals. 

“He sort of developed the blueprint for it,” his sister said. “I think a lot of his success is because he’s see what people keep telling him and then he goes out and tries to beat it. “And he’s successful because he’s already done it before. He's done this blueprint several times already.” 

That blueprint has now taken him beyond even his own wildest dreams. And McMann has no designs on waking up anytime soon. 

He’s impressed with new teammate and fellow winger Mackie Samoskevich and his own quickness, knowing how multiple forwards with above average speed and agility could help the Kraken take some surprising steps forward. That’s why he’ll keep pushing teammates in camp to not let up; knowing that hard work can go a long way toward proving others wrong about you. 

“It's not about me coming in telling guys they should be doing anything, but it's kind of just like setting that example and setting that standard for how I think it should be done,” McMann said. “And hopefully guys are pushing me too. I want guys to play me hard, and I'll play them hard.” 

After all, even with off-ice life now made easier by his new deal, McMann has always had a penchant for doing stuff the hard way.