Kraken sign Mackie Samoskevich to three-year, $3.85 million deal

Seattle’s bet on Mackie Samoskevich became a three-year, $3.85 million commitment on July 1, giving the Kraken a 23-year-old forward whose track from the USHL to the NHL has already produced real value. The deal followed a June 21 trade from Florida and came after Samoskevich had already shown he could score in every stop along the way.

The Kraken paid for that upside with a 2026 first-round pick and a 2027 conditional second-round pick, then moved quickly to lock in a player Jason Botterill described as bringing more “shooter mentality” to the forward group. Botterill also pointed to Samoskevich’s age, speed, shot and Stanley Cup experience after his 2025 title with Florida, a combination that made a three-year commitment easier to justify for a player who is still early in his NHL arc.

Samoskevich’s NHL production explains why Seattle moved. In 2024-25, he scored 15 goals and 31 points in 72 regular-season games for the Panthers, tying Carter Verhaeghe for the team lead with five game-winning goals. Florida said those 15 goals were seventh-most by a Panthers rookie and fourth-most by a U.S.-born rookie that season, while his 31 points matched Jonathan Huberdeau’s 2012-13 total for the eighth-most by a Panthers rookie in franchise history. He followed that with career highs of 32 points in 77 games in 2025-26 before the trade to Seattle.

For USHL fans, the path is the point. Before Michigan, Samoskevich spent parts of three seasons with the Chicago Steel from 2018-19 through 2020-21 and scored 73 points in 85 regular-season games. His breakout junior season came in 2020-21, when he had 37 points in 36 regular-season games and 10 more in eight playoff games as Chicago won the Clark Cup, the USHL’s championship trophy. Michigan’s bio lists him as an alternate captain on that title team, another marker of how quickly he became one of the Steel’s defining offensive players.

That junior production carried straight into Ann Arbor. At Michigan, Samoskevich finished with 72 points in 79 games, earned Big Ten All-Freshman Team honors in 2022 and Big Ten Second All-Star Team recognition in 2023, and helped the Wolverines win Big Ten Tournament titles in both 2022 and 2023. Drafted 24th overall by Florida in 2021, the Newtown, Connecticut, native has moved from Chicago to Michigan to the NHL in a way that reinforces the USHL as a direct feeder for teams willing to invest long term in finished junior products who are still getting better.