- Eddie Olczyk is stepping away from Kraken Hockey Network after four seasons in the booth
- He turns 60 next month and will stay on as TNT’s lead national analyst
- Read below for his full letter to Kraken fans and what changes in Seattle
Eddie Olczyk is done calling Seattle Kraken games.
The analyst told Kraken fans Tuesday that he is leaving the local broadcast booth after four seasons, and he laid out the reason in a letter the team posted.
“I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to step away from my analyst role on Kraken Hockey Network for personal and family reasons. It’s time for me to go back home and be there for me and my family.”
This is not a retirement. Olczyk stays on as the lead analyst for TNT, a national gig he has held since Turner picked up NHL rights in 2021.
Two decades of the same routine finally caught up. Olczyk worked 65 national games last season on top of his Seattle duties, all while bouncing between a condo on the East Side and his real home outside Chicago. He turns 60 on Aug. 16.
Olczyk explained the decision to Geoff Baker of the Kraken website:
“I’ve done the same schedule for the last 20 years. It just comes to a point where you have to make a decision. It’s been in the making, and I just thought this was the time that I wanted to be home more.”
Family is what brought him to Seattle in the first place. His brother Ricky is a Kraken assistant general manager. His son Nick worked Kraken broadcasts before moving to the Utah Mammoth in 2024, and another son, Eddie, scouts for the club.
He sat down with Daren Millard and John Shannon on Tuesday to walk through the whole thing. Catch the full conversation:
Seattle goes back to a two-man booth. John Forslund and J.T. Brown worked together as a duo in the Kraken’s first season before Olczyk arrived, and they kept pairing up whenever his national schedule pulled him away. Olczyk called just 21 Kraken games last year.
Forslund was asked about losing the guy who sat next to him for four years.
“I support him 100% because he’s such a dear friend and a great colleague and one of the best, if not the best, people I’ve ever worked with and hopefully still will on a national basis. So, I get it. I understand what he’s up against and how he came to this decision.”
Olczyk closed his letter with a nod to the play-by-play man he shared a headset with, writing that he hopes the two get to call some national Kraken broadcasts together down the road. Given how quiet Seattle’s offseason has been, the booth might be the most interesting thing about the broadcast anyway.
