Ont. — For years, Ottawa Senators fans watched Brady Tkachuk bring the fight to opponents. When he returned to Ottawa as a despised member of the Florida Panthers, they unleashed their own combative spirit, bringing a level of sustained savagery that would make even the most vindictive fanbases proud
Perhaps even blush.
Sens supporters were merciless on their former captain on Wednesday night, as Tkachuk — who was traded to the Florida Panthers in June after informing Ottawa he would not sign another contract with the team — returned for the first time to the city he called home for eight seasons. The Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata throbbed with an energy worthy of a Game 7, as emotions pent up for months — maybe even longer — spilled onto the ice like blood after a brawl.
While the start of the game was marked by rigorous boos, the end featured what remained of an announced sellout crowd gleefully cheering as the final seconds ticked away in a thunderous 5-1 Ottawa win.
A couple events — Tkachuk himself scoring on Florida’s first shot of the contest and Sens goalie Linus Ullmark being forced out of the game with a lower-body strain in the third — threatened to sap the masses of their zealous desire to deride. But the home team more than did its part, giving credence to one of the night’s more common chants — We don’t need you! — by scoring five unanswered goals to record about the most emotionally charged victory you could ever hope to witness in October.
“I didn’t expect it to be that much,” said Senators defenceman Jake Sanderson after the win. “Little crazy, but you know what, we have great fans, they’re passionate, they want to see our team do good and win. They brought the energy tonight and it’s awesome to see everyone on their feet at the end of the game.”
Sanderson, slowed by a lower-body injury, was playing his first game since seeing just a handful of minutes in the season-opener on Oct. 3 in Toronto. On a night the fans absolutely torched a bridge to the past with their treatment of Tkachuk, the best part may have been Sanderson — who finished with two assists and a team-high 22:36 of ice time — illuminating the path forward by reminding everyone how important he is to this squad.
“Every time he has the puck, every time he makes a play, it’s so effortless,” said Ottawa forward Tim Stutzle, who continued his own fantastic start to the campaign with a 1-1-2 showing.
Of course, anytime a Tkachuk is involved — be it Brady or big brother Matthew, his linemate with the Panthers — you know things are going to get physical. Right after Brady opened the scoring with a power-play goal 10 minutes into the game, Ottawa’s Hayden Hodgson and Florida’s Bokondji Imama dropped the gloves following the centre-ice face-off.
Early in the third, it was Sens forward Ridly Greig and Florida’s Sam Bennett throwing knuckles in the evening’s second tilt. Beyond that, the numerous scrums and chirps underscored the fact that this was no standard hockey game, and Stutzle was proud of the way his teammates stood tall.
“You see guys stepping up for each other,” he said. “We had a lot of nail guns out there tonight.”
It’s easy to assume the added chippiness was a bit of message-sending to their old pal, but Stutzle denied that was the case.
“We’re playing our game,” he said. “There’s no message. We just play our game. It doesn’t matter who we play. He’s a really good player, we had to be really detailed against (the Panthers), they have a great team. I think it was just a whole team effort, that’s the way we want to play. We’re hard to play against and there doesn’t need to be any messages. I think everybody respects each other and we just found a way to win tonight.”
There might remain a shared respect on the ice, but it sure seemed to evaporate by the time you got to the stands. Granted, nobody expected anything warm and fuzzy around this reunion. Tkachuk’s relationship to the team’s supporters had clearly become strained by the time the situation resolved with his move south. Maybe the former teammates who dined with Tkachuk Tuesday night still cherish the good times they had, but in the with-us-or-against world of fandom, there’s no room for nuance.
Tkachuk stiff-armed the city, in the eyes of its sporting citizens, and on Wednesday night they wound up and slapped back.
The booing began the moment the Panthers came out and knocked over a pile of pucks at the start of warm-ups and picked up any time Tkachuk was involved in, well, anything.
The chants were varied, incessant and ranged from R-rated to childish to downright creative. Every one of them — Matthew’s bet-ter!; You can’t read!; You eat crayons!— was imbued with a spiteful spirit Ottawa backers clearly believed appropriate for the occasion.
“I heard a few of them,” Sanderson acknowledged after the game. “I don’t really have a comment about it, but yeah, I did hear them.”
No video tribute highlighting Tkachuk’s humanitarian work in the community was going to divert fans from what they came to do, which was extract a pound of flesh — verbally, anyway — from a player they felt betrayed them. There even seemed to be an element of taunting when, in the second period, Sens fans heartily cheered another returning player, fourth-liner Lars Eller. Did the veteran Dane really make that big of an impression on Sens fans during his one season in Ottawa or was the crowd’s loud response proof they would take any opportunity presented to let Tkachuk know they liked every person in the building more than him?
Earlier in the day, Tkachuk said nothing he experienced from the fans would change the positive memories he has of the city but, goodness gracious, they sure did try.
“Were they ruthless?” a seemingly unfazed Tkachuk asked with a certain coyness after the game. “No, it was good. Shows the passion they have.”
Tkachuk finished the night with six penalty minutes — the same number as Matthew — as both brothers departed the ice early thanks to roughing calls from one final dust-up.
Brady’s exit from the ice gave the fans one more chance to pop, putting an exclamation mark on a night like few others in the history of the franchise.
“Any time you have a crowd like that, it’s so much fun playing in front of them,” Stutzle said. “They helped us a lot tonight.”
And they sure had fun doing it.
