The Seattle Kraken has signed one-year contracts with a goaltender and a defenseman. The sale of the Seahawks has narrowed to two groups of bidders. In baseball, the Mariners are set for a pitching duel with the Rays.
The Seattle Kraken signed one-year deals with goaltender Victor Ostman and defenseman Ville Ottavainen
Seattle Kraken general manager Jayson Botterill announced one-year, two-way contracts for goaltender Victor Ostman and defenseman Ville Ottavainen for the 2026/27 season. Both agreements include an average annual salary of $850,000, a standard practice for young players who can perform at both the NHL and AHL levels. As reported by NHL.com, these signings add depth to the club’s roster.
Victor Ostman, 25, played his first full professional season with the Kraken’s farm team, the Coachella Valley Firebirds of the American Hockey League. Over 36 games, he earned 17 wins and 15 losses, with three overtime losses, posting a 2.81 goals-against average and a .906 save percentage. He also recorded two shutouts. The Swedish goaltender stands 193 centimeters tall, which helps him cover the top of the net. Notably, Ostman registered two assists—leading all AHL rookie goaltenders in that category and placing fifth among all goaltenders in the league by assists. His standout achievement from last season was his NHL debut on April 16, 2026, when he made 35 saves in Seattle’s starting lineup.
Defenseman Ville Ottavainen, 23, is already in his third season with the Firebirds. In 53 regular-season games, he totaled 17 points (3 goals and 14 assists) and racked up 71 minutes in penalties. Among defensemen in the farm club, the Finn finished second in assists and fourth in total points. In the Calder Cup playoffs, he scored one goal and added three assists. In his AHL career, Ottavainen has played 193 games, totaling 66 points (14+52), and in 36 playoff games he added 9 points (1+8). At 196 centimeters, his size is typical for the modern big, physical defenseman who can play tough in front of his own net.
A two-way contract means a player’s salary depends on which league he plays in: in the NHL, he earns the full amount, while in the AHL he earns significantly less. These deals are often made with young hockey players who haven’t secured a spot in the main lineup yet, so the club can move them between leagues flexibly without major financial impact. For the Seattle Kraken, signing Ostman and Ottavainen is a step toward building a reliable depth bench. Ostman already has NHL experience, while Ottavainen is developing in the AHL and could eventually challenge for a role in the top defensive group. Importantly, both players are still young, and the club is counting on their continued growth—possibly appearing more often in Kraken gear next season if they show steady play during preseason training.
Seahawks sale: down to two bidders
The sale process for the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks is entering a decisive stage. According to information published by Front Office Sports, the circle of potential buyers has narrowed to two groups. Both groups had already been mentioned in reports from Sports Business Journal and other sources as leading contenders. The first group includes minority owner of the Boston Celtics Aditya Mittal and former majority owner of the Celtics Wyc Grousbeck. The second group is led by Vinod Hosla, a minority owner of the San Francisco 49ers. As reported, other interested parties have already been told that they are out of the running. In particular, Todd Boehly, co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers—who had previously been considered as a possible bidder—no longer figures among the contenders.
At the same time, one source for the outlet noted that an additional buyer cannot be completely ruled out. It’s interesting that Microsoft co-founder Steve Ballmer—who many people suspected from the start of wanting to buy the team—according to FOS is not listed among the bidders. It is also known that the current vice chairman of the Seahawks, Bert Koldy, is in San Valley this week for the annual Allen & Company event—the very investment bank firm hired to carry out the deal. It’s expected that Koldy will discuss sale details there. A representative for Vulcan LLC, the management company for Paul Allen’s estate, said, “There’s no news about the sale yet.”
Recall that Sportico previously reported interest from the Mittal/Grousbeck and Hosla groups, and The Seattle Times also confirmed it. According to Bloomberg, initial bids were due by June 29. Aditya Mittal, 50-year-old CEO of ArcelorMittal, is the heir to one of India’s richest families; his father Lakshmi Mittal’s fortune is valued by Forbes at $29.7 billion. Mittal invested about $1 billion in the group that bought the Boston Celtics from Grousbeck. Grousbeck himself, who founded the Celtics ownership group in 2002, will remain part of the ownership team under the deal terms through 2028.
According to Sportico, because Mittal lives in London, Grousbeck will live in Seattle on a permanent basis and effectively run the franchise. Vinod Hosla, 71-year-old co-founder of Sun Microsystems, along with his son Neil, bought 3.1% of the San Francisco 49ers’ shares in May 2025. Neil Hosla is the CEO and co-founder of Curai, an AI-enabled telemedicine startup.
The sale of the Seahawks was initiated by Paul Allen’s estate in February 2025, and the deal is expected to be completed by the start of the 2026 regular season, when the Seahawks will begin on September 9 with a game against the New England Patriots. That means the final decision will likely be made in the coming months.
Mariners vs. Rays: betting on a pitching duel in Seattle
It’s hard to understand what’s going on with the Seattle Mariners in the 2026 season. It seems the team caught fire and settled into the lead in the Western Division race, but then came an unexpected brutal road loss in Miami, where the Marlboro won the series in a sweep. Yes, the Mariners’ offense is far from consistent and can’t reliably generate enough runs, but Seattle’s pitching staff is so strong that the club uses a six-man rotation—this is not the kind of lineup that should be hovering around a 50% win rate. Can the team bounce back in a game against the American League leader, the Tampa Bay Rays? In the pregame preview on DraftKings Network, the authors tried to break down all the details of the matchup and offer several betting predictions.
For a long time, the weak link in that six-man rotation appeared to be Luis Castillo. By this point, the veteran right-hander has an inflated season-long ERA of 4.79, but his last seven outings from the 33-year-old pitcher suggest optimism: some of those were “spot” outings out of the bullpen, yet since May 25, Castillo has been showing a 2.72 ERA and a 2.92 FIP across 36.1 innings. His strikeout rate of 19.5% over that stretch leaves something to be desired, but “visually” the pitches still look convincing: in the previous meeting against the Toronto Blue Jays, his sinker reportedly topped out at 97.8 miles per hour. It feels like the experienced pitcher has found a second wind.
Ironically, right across from him on the mound will be Nick Martínez. If Castillo is performing worse than his expected metrics, Martínez is basically laughing in the face of statistical regression. Across 17 starts and exactly 100 innings, the 35-year-old pitcher is putting up an impressive 2.61 ERA—third-best in the American League after Schmittler and Cis. But Martínez’s page on Baseball Savant looks much less optimistic: an eighth percentile expected batting average (.281) and a sixth percentile strikeout percentage (15.0%). Sooner or later, analysts say, the opponents’ BABIP, currently at .269, should rise, and the left-on-base runner percentage, at 85.3%, should fall—at which point Martínez would start looking closer to his xERA of 4.69. But this is the Rays, a team that knows how to pull off miracles, and betting on normalization would be something to approach with caution.
The problem is that the Mariners’ offense is unlikely to be the kind of force that will make the opposing pitcher make mistakes. Julio Rodríguez (concussion) and Brandon Donovan (groin injury) remain on the injured list, and the team is desperately trying to get runners home. Over the full season, Seattle ranks 26th in runs scored (381), and over the last two weeks, the batting average has been a miserable .226 alongside an enormous 26.7% strikeout rate. That’s not the kind of statistical profile that inspires confidence about a breakthrough against such an opponent.
Given that Castillo has found excellent form, and that Martínez is delivering a true elite season despite skepticism from expected metrics, analysts are expecting a real pitching duel. Plus, the Mariners have been desperate not to score runs lately. Interestingly, with such a low swing-and-miss rate (18.1%—the fourth percentile) and an overall strikeout rate (15.0%—the sixth percentile), Martínez finished 13 of his 17 starts below the league’s standard line for that indicator. And those numbers shape one of the most obvious betting angles for Friday’s game: everything points to a low-scoring affair and lots of work for the pitchers.
