The Ottawa Senators responded in the best possible way in their first game since a video surfaced showing several players joking about and criticizing the coaching staff when secretly filmed during an Uber ride while on a recent road trip in Arizona.
The Sens beat the New Jersey Devils 7-3 Tuesday and immediately following the game forward Matt Duchene, one of the players who was in the Uber, issued an apology to assistant coach Martin Raymond who was one of the criticized coaches mentioned by name.
“I want to take this opportunity to extend my absolutely sincerest apologies to Marty Raymond,” Duchene told reporters at Canadian Tire Centre. “He’s a heck of a person, a coach, and he did not deserve what we said. That’s all I can say on it right now, unfortunately.”
Duchene described Raymond, who helps run Ottawa’s special teams units, as being “the only coach in NHL history to have the worst power play and the worst [penalty kill] within a calendar year.”
Duchene was in the vehicle with teammates Chris Wideman, Thomas Chabot, Chris Tierney, Dylan DeMelo, Colin White and Alex Formenton.
General manager of Uber Canada, Rob Khazzam, tweeted the following statement in response to the scandal:
“A video was released by the media today of several Uber passengers being filmed without their consent while having a private discussion during a trip in Phoenix. This is a clear violation of our terms of service and we worked vigorously to investigate this issue.
“Filming or recording passengers without their consent is totally unacceptable and if reported/detected we will investigate + take action to preserve our communities (sic) privacy and integrity. In this specific case, we made efforts to have the video taken down.”
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