Brady Tkachuk, Senators ready to get first reunion over with
The Florida Panthers are hardly fan favorites when they visit opposing arenas, but the crowd for Wednesday’s road game against the Ottawa Senators should be especially antagonistic. Wednesday will be former Senators captain Brady Tkachuk’s first game back in Ottawa since requesting and getting granted a trade to the Panthers this past offseason.
Fan bases usually don’t take it in stride when a star player decides to orchestrate his exit from their team. Just ask John Tavares about visiting the New York Islanders, or Jack Eichel about going back to play the Buffalo Sabres. Wednesday night should be no different, and Senators fans will have plenty of vitriol in store for Tkachuk.
On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Carter Hutton and Steve Peters were joined by Brent Wallace to discuss the expectations heading into Tkachuk’s return to Ottawa.
Carter Hutton: With Brady’s return, what is the vibe in Ottawa? What is it like around the rink and the fanbase with everything that’s been going on with him? And obviously seeing his natural hat trick success going on in Florida.
Brent Wallace: Yeah, his first star of the week couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Ottawa Senators fans, if you will. They were hoping he was going to continue that pace of no points in five games. This isn’t about the players, necessarily. The players are kind of saying like, “Yeah, we’re interested a little bit” or “We’re not paying attention.” This is basically the fans of Ottawa having one last chance to voice their displeasure, or pleasure if they have any, with the way Brady was here for the last eight years.
It will obviously be a lot of boos, of course boos throughout. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. But there is a lot of chatter. Everywhere I went this summer and leading up to this game has been about Brady Tkachuk for the most part. Once this game gets done, though, I think that becomes the cleansing and now everybody can kind of move on and put it behind them. But we’ll see how this game goes.
You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Tuesday’s episode here…
