‘Best eight years anyone could ask for’: Brady Tkachuk posts farewell to Senators fans
A league-shaking trade went down on Sunday between the Ottawa Senators and Florida Panthers, as the former sent captain and star winger Brady Tkachuk to the latter in exchange for three first-round picks and a second-round pick.
The move united the younger Tkachuk with his older brother Matthew on a two-time Stanley Cup champion Panthers team that now looks primed to take a serious run at another.
On Monday, Senators general manager Steve Staios told reporters that Tkachuk had requested a trade, and Brady broke his silence on Tuesday morning with a clip from the podcast Wingmen that he hosts with his brother.
“Ottawa truly shaped me into the person I am today,” Tkachuk said. “The city of Ottawa and the fan base, everybody welcomed me from day one, treating me like I was from there, treating me like family. I’ll just never forget that. Spending eight years in Ottawa was truly some of the most special moments of my life I got to experience there… I never imagined life to turn out the way that it did. Thank you to everybody in the city. All the fans, all my teammates, staff, everybody, coaches. I’m super grateful for the relationships I was able to make.”
“Ottawa truly shaped me into the person I am today.” Brady has nothing but love for the Senators and the city of Ottawa 🫶
The Senators chose Tkachuk with the No. 4 overall pick in the first round of the 2018 NHL Draft. Over the course of his eight seasons in Canada’s capital, he appeared in 572 regular season games, scoring 213 goals and handing out 250 assists for 463 points.
Ottawa was absent from the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first six years of Tkachuk’s career, but the Scottsdale native captained the Sens to the postseason in each of the past two years. On both occasions, Ottawa bowed out in the first round after falling into a 3-0 hole, first to the Toronto Maple Leafs after pushing the series to six games, and more recently in a four-game sweep at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes this postseason.
While the Tkachuk brothers will form a major portion of a formidable forward unit in Sunrise, Staios and the Senators will now look to use their newfound excess draft capital to fill the void Tkachuk leaves in the top six of a team with a promising nucleus of talent.