SEATTLE (AP) — From his first steps on the ice with the Seattle Kraken, forward Matty Beniers generally has been regarded as the face of the franchise.
The 2023 NHL Rookie of the Year helped lift the Kraken to its lone playoff appearance and has compiled three seasons of 20 or more goals and two with 30 or more assists. He's the one Kraken player fans probably know in arenas from Detroit to Dallas to Denver.
Add this to the list: One of their undisputed leaders.
The alternate captain the last two seasons, he's not afraid to speak up when the occasion calls for it. This summer, he defended the organization after Dallas’ Jason Robertson nixed a sign-and-trade deal with Seattle. “If you don’t want to be here, we don’t want you anyway,” Beniers said in an interview with The Athletic.
But if there’s one moment that's cemented his leadership status it might be his first — and only — NHL fight.
It happened last March 10 in a 4-2 home loss to Nashville. Teammate Jared McCann was cross-checked hard into the boards by Justin Barron. The referee’s arm was already up to call the penalty.
Beniers, whose skating momentum was carrying him past the altercation, stopped on a dime, turned, went up to Barron with some pushing and shoving, then dropped his gloves and started punching.
“It’s unbelievable to see that,” defenseman Adam Larsson said afterward. “He’s such a big part of this team — that was huge.”
Added forward Jordan Eberle, “I love that. In a situation in a game like that where we’re right in it and he steps up like that is just awesome. It shows leadership on his part.”
Beniers, with just 59 penalty minutes in 331 games over four-plus seasons, mostly shrugged it off during postgame interviews.
“That was the first one,” he said when asked about previous fights at any level.
The heat is on the Kraken to step it up after missing the playoffs for a third straight season, including a 7-17-2 post-Olympics crash a year ago.
“That falls on our leaders, myself included," said Beniers, whose team opens the season Thursday in Calgary. "It’s not that you need to put the team on your back. But you need to steer the ship in the right direction, and we might not have done a good enough job of that.”
At 23, Beniers is by far the youngest member of Seattle’s five-man leadership group, which includes 36-year-old captain Eberle and fellow alternate captains Larsson (33), Brandon Montour (32) and Vince Dunn (29).
But it was made clear he fits right in with them.
“You don’t have to be loud to be a leader. Matty is doing it mostly with his play, and that kind of speaks for itself and how he carries himself and what he brings out there,” Larsson said. “He has been evolving as a person when it comes to being a voice in here, too, and I think that comes with maturity.”
A sentiment echoed by Montour: "For a younger kid to come in and be part of a leadership group, that speaks volumes.”
It didn’t take long for second-year coach Lane Lambert to see some of those traits — being more vocal and a leader by example — taking place on the ice.
“Matty is a confident guy," Lambert said. "It’s a really endearing quality and it’s a character trait that he has.”
Beniers said his style is simply absorbing it all, on and off the ice.
“It’s being able to read a room," he said. "Having those relationships with your teammates where they know that you’re just trying to help them, no matter what it is you’re coming to them with.”
Sometimes, that even means dropping the gloves.
“That’s a little bit of a rite of passage, your first NHL fight,” Beniers said. “When it’s your turn, it’s your turn — and it was my turn.”
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Seattle Kraken, from left, forward Matty Beniers, defenseman Ryker Evans, forward Jared McCann and defenseman Brandon Montour celebrate a goal during the third period of a preseason NHL hockey game against the Calgary Flames, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
Seattle Kraken forward Matty Beniers, right, skates against Calgary Flames forward Aydar Suniev during the second period of a preseason NHL hockey game, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee's execution of Christa Gail Pike for a murder she committed at age 18 was halted Wednesday about an hour before it was set to begin, as a federal appeals court sought to review whether her allegations of childhood sexual abuse and rape were fully considered at her sentencing.
Pike, now 50, and her boyfriend were convicted of the 1995 stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in at least 200 years.
The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals halted the execution on a 2-1 vote after execution witnesses and others gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Tennessee’s attorney general immediately appealed the stay to the U.S. Supreme Court. Witnesses and media remained at the prison in case the high court allows the execution to proceed. Media witnesses were brought into the prison about 10:15 a.m. to wait, but then were let back out into a parking lot after about 90 minutes.
More than 30 people, some wearing shirts that said “Love Heals,” gathered in a fenced-in area outside the prison while police on horses watched nearby.
The case garnered widespread attention at the time of the killing in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
As the execution date drew near, it renewed debate over the death penalty for young offenders.
Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider Pike’s age at the time, mental illness and a history of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler. Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.
Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution. She didn't respond to a message Wednesday after the execution was halted.
Martinez said her daughter's age should matter too in deciding Pike's fate.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 earlier in September.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it’s difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death there.
It's a rarity across the U.S. Since 1976, 18 women have been put to death in the country, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.
Most recently, Missouri in 2023 executed Amber McLaughlin for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021, the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government put a female inmate to death.
Pike would be the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year. Florida carried out its 16th execution of 2026 on Tuesday.
Associated Press journalists Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.
Leslie Brown, right, stands with others in the area reserved for people in favor to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Kathleen Walter prays in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Alonzo Hughes participates in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn. (WBIR-TV via AP)
This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)
