OTTAWA — Brady Tkachuk’s finest moment as an Ottawa Senator may have doubled as his final great one with the club.
It was in the immediate aftermath of a Game 4, overtime win against the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Following a Jake Sanderson goal that kept Ottawa alive in the series, Tkachuk glided across the ice in the middle of a delirious Canadian Tire Centre and exclaimed to the crowd, “We’ll be back!” It was a defiant declaration that, despite being down 3-1 in the series, the Sens would keep scrapping, their chesty captain personally guaranteeing the fight had only just begun.
Now, roughly 18 months after Tkachuk led the charge against the Leafs, the city of Ottawa is preparing for a return that figures to be even more emotionally charged than a playoff clash with their hated rivals.
On Wednesday, Tkachuk — traded away in June — will play his first game in Ottawa as a member of the Florida Panthers.
“I’m going to be nervous,” Tkachuk said from his new home after practice in South Florida on Monday. “It’s going to be fun, a weird but cool experience, and yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”
There are, of course, multiple layers to this engagement. On one level, you’ve got a player coming back to face old teammates, many of whom remain friends. Yeah, they want to beat the guy, but they also went through the battles with him, to say nothing of the off-ice bonds that form in your 20s when you’re part of a larger family.
“I think I’m going to see him tonight for dinner,” Senators winger Drake Batherson said on Tuesday. “It’ll be good to catch up.”
For Batherson, there’s still an element of slappin’ backs with an old buddy. Senators supporters, though, will be reacting with the raw emotion of being slapped in the face.
That’s simply how it feels to many fans, as people who have a big-time investment in these players and teams without any of it being tempered by personal relationships.
It’s a black-and-white case of, “This guy didn’t want us, now we can let him know how glad we are he’s gone.”
Of course, this drama is just one vignette in a league-wide story about stars grabbing hold of their own fate and American players — at least, the ones good enough to be at the Olympics winning gold medals — wanting to play at home instead of on foreign soil.
Poke at these narratives a bit and you’ll be able to penetrate some of the superficial fluff. Detroit Red Wing Dylan Larkin, a Michigan native, is a Team USA member who wants out of his home state; Quinn Hughes, who plays for Team USA GM Bill Guerin in Minnesota, still won’t rush down the aisles to sign a contract extension in the heartland of American hockey because — some theorize — a bigger priority is playing with his brothers down the line.
And that fraternal theme is one worth remembering here, as Brady joined big brother Matthew on a championship-level team in Florida. You can say Brady — the son of American Hall of Famer Keith Tkachuk — stuck it to Ottawa and you might not be wrong. Still, the lure of playing with a best pal and brother on a team you can win with is a strong pull.
Remember, Tkachuk once committed to Ottawa by signing a seven-year deal to stay there in 2021. But that 2025 series against Toronto represented the first playoff games of Tkachuk’s NHL tenure, as the Sens failed to make the post-season until seven years into his career. That’s not going to sit well with any NHLer, let alone the chippy offspring of a power forward who’s watched his sibling play deep into the spring on an annual basis.
Brady may be bludgeoned with boos on Wednesday, but you don’t have to be a complete apologist to see why he was wondering about a future somewhere else.
Either way, you can’t have a captain with one skate out the door and that’s what it began to feel like with Tkachuk and the Sens last year.
For all the talk of Americans not wanting to play in Canada, it’s worth noting not every guy with a U.S. passport has the same bearing as the in-your-face Tkachuk boys. Just to the east of Ottawa, Americans Cole Caufield and Lane Hutson have eagerly signed up to be stars for the next decade in Montreal; to the south, Auston Matthews — despite being on a team with a less-than-clear path to glory — seems dedicated to making it work in Toronto.
Just because Brady wanted out of Ottawa, that doesn’t mean Sanderson — a superstar American and Sens defenceman who serves as a reminder that Tkachuk’s departure was no death blow for the franchise — will follow suit.
Tkachuk made good on his promise back in 2025, as the Senators forced another game in their building, one ultimately won by Toronto. That return, it goes without saying, was unsatisfying.
This next one, however, is sure to prove therapeutic for agitated fans in Ottawa. Win or lose, they’ll be able to unleash their pent-up feelings on a player who is no longer one of their own.
