Matty Beniers knows about great expectations. In 2021, then a college sophomore, he was drafted by the Seattle Kraken in hopes he’d grow into the franchise’s first young star. Last season, he emerged as just that, winning the National Hockey League’s rookie of the year trophy, scoring 24 goals, and serving as linchpin of a squad that charged two rounds into the Stanley Cup playoffs, knocking off the defending champions along the way. No sweat for the Massachusetts-born Beniers, who had already dodged a curveball (or is that a slap shot?) when pandemic cancellations derailed his planned college career at Harvard. In a detour to University of Michigan, he honed a combo of speed and hockey IQ that led him to the NHL and Seattle’s expansion team creating itself from scratch. This season Beniers returns to the ice fueled by Climate Pledge crowds and a discerning taste for the local culinary scene—and with sky-high hopes for the Kraken.

Matthew and Matt were way too serious for me. So I was always Matty growing up.

When I was 18 months old, I tried skating for the first time.

They said I skated around a little bit, fell down, skated back to the bench, fell down. I was like ‘Mom, it’s too slippery.’

Seattle was the team I wanted to go to. I thought it was really cool, the aspect of a new team in a city.

We have a lot of leaders on the team. You know, we might be a newer team, but we have a lot of older guys who have played a lot of years...who’ve won Stanley Cups.

We want to be a good hockey team, but we also want to be good people. That’s kind of the energy we have around the locker room.

There’s always stuff you can work on, like skating, stick handling, shots. You can get that much better. A little amount better can make a difference in games.

I want to win the Stanley Cup. That’s the biggest thing. I think that we could right now. For sure.

The guys that have won, they will tell you right away: the most important thing is team chemistry, how you are in your locker room.

We’re a good team. We’re not catching people by surprise anymore when we beat them, you know. They’re gonna be expecting us.

The fan base in Seattle is just unbelievable. 

After you score, you hear them cheer and you get a lot of adrenaline momentum. And that really affects our team.

When I leave [the rink], I definitely like to have fun and let loose.

I’m an okay cook. I would say the meals I can cook, I’m really good at them. I don’t have too much versatility.

With all the downtime we have on the planes and buses, I download different shows. My roommate [Kraken defenseman Will Borgen] is pretty big into them; he’s probably watched all of them.

We watched Yellowstone together last year. We’ll set up a time at night and watch together and then go to bed. It’s like a married couple, basically.

I’ve been trying to explore more. We love going out to different restaurants and trying them out. We had a little whiteboard at our house last year where we rate different restaurants.

Food, service, how far it is from our house. Parking. We count all of it.

We had Chipotle as a 10. We just love it.

We did both Seattle and Bellevue: Carmine’s, Cantinetta, Pink Door. I love Italian. I liked Shiro’s Sushi, but [Borgen] didn’t like it as much.

And the salmon here is unbelievable.