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The moment Matty Beniers stepped onto the ice at Climate Pledge Arena for the first time as a professional hockey player, something shifted in Seattle. It wasn't just the roar of a crowd still learning the game—though that was genuine and thunderous. It was the weight of expectation, hope, and possibility concentrated into one twenty-year-old kid from Michigan who had chosen to leave college early to build something extraordinary in a city that had never had NHL hockey before. He was the second overall pick of the 2021 NHL Draft, the Kraken's statement piece, their promise to a skeptical sports world that Seattle was serious about ice hockey. But more than that, he was proof that a teenage kid could believe so completely in a project, in a city, in himself, that he would walk away from the University of Michigan to chase it. That kind of faith doesn't happen often in sports. When it does, it deserves to be witnessed.
The Kid from Michigan
Matthew Richard Beniers Jr. was born in Edina, Minnesota, but hockey ran deeper in his blood than geography. His father, Rich Beniers, knew the sport intimately—not as a player, but as someone who understood its culture, its demands, its ability to forge character in young people. The family eventually landed in Hingham, Massachusetts, a hockey hotbed where the winters are long and the ice rinks are gathering places for communities bound by tradition. Matty was no different from a thousand other New England kids with a stick in hand before he could properly walk, but there was something about the way he moved through space, the intelligence in his positioning, the patience of a player who understood that hockey wasn't about pure speed but about anticipation. He played for local youth clubs, developed through the apparatus that produces so many of America's best young hockey players, and by the time he was old enough for high school, it was clear that he was different from most.
He attended Edina High School in Minnesota—a program that has produced NHL talent for generations—and immediately made an impact. But rather than rest on high school achievements, Beniers did what the best American prospects do: he committed to the University of Michigan in 2019, choosing to play for one of the most prestigious college hockey programs in the world. At Michigan, he joined a pipeline that had previously developed Connor and Dylan Larkin, among countless others. The Wolverines program doesn't just teach you to play hockey; it teaches you to think like a professional, to understand systems, to embrace the daily work that separates talented kids from complete players.
Over two seasons with Michigan, Beniers logged 54 games and accumulated 38 points. The statistics matter less than what they represented: a young American prospect, playing in a college system, demonstrating the kind of well-rounded, hockey-intelligent play that scouts crave. He wasn't the fastest skater, wasn't the hardest shooter, but he had something rarer—spatial awareness, the ability to make teammates better, and the kind of consistency that translates to professional hockey. Teams were watching. The 2021 NHL Draft was circling on the calendar.
The Call That Changed Everything
On July 23, 2021, the Seattle Kraken made their second overall pick. The franchise was brand new, having just been approved by the NHL, and the entire organization was built on the premise that you could manufacture success through intelligent construction. The first overall pick went to Mitch Garland, a defenceman. The second pick went to Matty Beniers. It was a statement: we believe in this player, in his character, in his trajectory toward becoming a foundational piece of what we're building.
The Kraken weren't wrong. What made Beniers' selection so meaningful wasn't just that he was talented—it was that he was exactly the kind of player that expansion franchises dream about. He was homegrown in the American hockey system, raised in excellence, and possessed of the kind of mental toughness that comes from playing against the best competition from childhood onward. More importantly, when given the chance to join the Kraken immediately, to leave the University of Michigan and begin his professional career in a brand-new city with a brand-new franchise, Beniers said yes.
That decision resonated far beyond hockey circles. Here was a kid who could have finished his college degree, played out his junior and senior seasons at Michigan, and entered the draft later with more experience and college credentials. Instead, he bet on himself and on Seattle. He believed that the Kraken's project was worth abandoning the comfort of college athletics for the uncertainty and intensity of professional sports. In a city that had been starved for major-league hockey, that kind of faith mattered. It said that Seattle was serious enough to attract talent, ambitious enough to inspire commitment, and compelling enough to change young men's lives.
A Rookie Year for the Ages
The 2021-22 season was unlike anything Seattle had experienced. The Kraken, playing in front of passionate, devoted crowds who were still learning the finer points of hockey, were a team learning on the fly—quite literally constructing their culture and identity game by game. Beniers, still only twenty years old, was thrust into this cauldron of expectation, novelty, and pressure. What he did was remarkable.
In 71 games during his rookie season, Beniers registered 24 goals and 25 assists for 49 points. More importantly, he played the kind of structured, intelligent hockey that made everyone around him better. He took on important defensive assignments, killed penalties, and played in crucial moments without flinching. He wasn't the highest scorer on a young team still finding its identity, but he was exactly what the Kraken needed: a reliable, smart, improving player who understood that hockey success is built on the compounding effect of small, consistent decisions made night after night.
At season's end, the NHL's awards committee voted him the Calder Trophy winner—the award given to the league's best rookie. At twenty years old, Matty Beniers became the face of Seattle hockey, the player whose name would forever be linked to the moment when this city fell in love with the sport. He had earned it through relentless professionalism, through showing up every single night and doing his job at the highest level despite the circus of an expansion season, despite his own inexperience, despite being a teenager playing against thirty-year-olds.
| Season | Games Played | Goals | Assists | Points | Notable Achievement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 (Rookie) | 71 | 24 | 25 | 49 | Calder Trophy Winner |
| 2022-23 | 52 | 14 | 14 | 28 | Limited by Injury |
| 2023-24 | 65 | 23 | 22 | 45 | Return to Form |
The Weight of Being Special
What followed Beniers' rookie success was something that every young player must navigate: the reality that the first year is rarely the ceiling, but rather the beginning. The 2022-23 season proved more difficult. Injuries limited him to just 52 games, and when he was healthy, he struggled to replicate the consistency that had earned him the Calder. The points dried up. The easy confidence of youth was tested by the brutality of professional sports, where a player can be the chosen one, the future, the franchise cornerstone—and still struggle, still fight, still have to prove himself again and again.
This is where character separates the players who fade from the ones who endure. Beniers did not disappear into doubt or recrimination. Instead, he did what all great players do: he worked. He studied. He learned from the struggle. He understood that being drafted second overall and winning the Calder Trophy as a rookie guaranteed nothing beyond opportunity. What you did with that opportunity—season after season, game after game, shift after shift—that was the actual measure.
By the 2023-24 season, the trajectory had corrected itself. Playing in 65 games, Beniers recorded 23 goals and 22 assists, putting up 45 points and demonstrating that the Calder-winning rookie wasn't a one-year phenomenon but the beginning of a genuine career arc. More importantly, he was establishing himself as the kind of player Seattle needed him to be: dependable, improving, and utterly committed to making the Kraken a competitive franchise in the Western Conference.
The Face of a City's New Identity
There's something profoundly moving about watching a city discover a sport. Seattle had Seahawks fans and Sounders supporters, had embraced soccer and football, but hockey was different. It was new, exotic, rooted in traditions that Seattle was just beginning to understand. And standing at the center of that discovery, wearing a Kraken uniform, was Matty Beniers. He wasn't the flashiest player, wasn't the one lighting the lamp every night. But he was real, he was present, and he was committed to excellence in a way that resonated with Seattle fans who valued authenticity.
When you see Beniers on the ice now, what you're watching is the human embodiment of a decision: to believe in something before it existed, to have faith in a project before it was proven, to choose a city over the comfort of tradition. He left Michigan, left the East Coast, left everything familiar to build something from nothing. That's not just hockey anymore. That's a statement about what this city can inspire, what it can demand, what it can become.
Matty Beniers is the face of Seattle's new hockey era because he was brave enough to help create it. He remains the player who stood at the beginning and said yes—yes to the Kraken, yes to the city, yes to the possibility. In a franchise's infancy, that kind of commitment is everything. As Seattle continues to fall deeper in love with hockey, as the Kraken grow into a competitive force in the NHL, Beniers will remain the symbol of that first moment when a young player believed enough to take the leap. That's his legacy. That's what he means to this city. And it's only the beginning.
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