'He took the easy way out': Senators fans react to captain Brady Tkachuk's departure
We got reaction from three die-hard Sens fans moments after their beloved leader was shipped off to the Florida Panthers to play with his brother.
Callum Fraser, Ottawa Citizen
Published Jun 22, 2026
Ottawa Senators fans feel like they’ve been slapped in the face.
Their hockey club dealt captain Brady Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers on Sunday evening in exchange for three first-round picks and a second-round selection. The Ottawa Citizen‘s Bruce Garrioch is reporting that Tkachuk had indicated to the Senators that he had no plans to re-sign after his contract expired in the summer of 2028.
Trade rumours had swirled around Tkachuk for years, but speculation that he wanted out seemed to pick up steam in 2026. Hockey reporters and podcasts theorized how a split would occur; in a 1-on-1 interview ahead of Game 1 against the Carolina Hurricanes, Sportsnet asked the 26-year-old directly if the political aftermath of his Olympic win with Team USA would impact his future in Ottawa.
Every time it was brought up, Tkachuk either denied or deflected.
Gatineau resident Tyler Stephens has been Sens-obsessed for a decade and a half. He once believed that Tkachuk truly cared about captaining a Canadian team.
“It’s a little embarrassing,” Stephens told the Citizen, “to have spent so much time defending him as a fan, saying, ‘Oh no, you guys have got it all wrong,’ just for that to not really be the case.”
Tkachuk will now suit up alongside his older brother, Matthew, with the Panthers. The pair took similar paths to get to South Florida. Matthew played six seasons for the Calgary Flames before requesting a trade.
“I don’t think Brady is some, like, super evil villain who just decided today he wanted out of Ottawa,” Stephens said. “That doesn’t make me hate him any less now, but I think he was a guy, a young guy, who sees his brother having success, and his brother and seems like a very big influence on him. I think he was kind of just ‘meh’ on Ottawa, right? Like, he’s seeing his brother winning Cups and he’s like, ‘Meh, I’m not unhappy in Ottawa, but I don’t really care.'”
The first notification Stephen Hickson saw after finishing his 92-kilometre Father’s Day bike ride was a message in a Sens fan group chat, relaying news of the trade.
“When he was a young player, he was so exciting,” Hickson said of Tkachuk. “I was ready to run through a wall for the guy.”
Like many die hards, Hickson was dubious of Tkachuk when the Senators selected the winger fourth overall in the 2018 NHL Draft. The majority of online fans were convinced the Sens should’ve taken Czech forward Filip Zadina, who now plays pro hockey in Switzerland. Come training camp, though, everyone in Ottawa had fallen in love with Tkachuk’s untamed style of play and his refreshing personality.
However, eight years later, when the team was supposed to be on the verge of contending for a Stanley Cup, something was missing.
“Even just compared to last year,” Hickson said, “when you look at his reaction after the (Josh) Norris trade; when he scores the game winner against the Rangers and there’s the ‘Let’s go!’ moment (during) the interview with (TSN’s) Claire Hanna, like, you could feel that he was really excited about the team and where it was going.
“This past year in similar moments, he would say the right things, but you could tell, it just didn’t feel quite as genuine as it had in years past. … I think there were a handful of fly-bys he’d done while forechecking and you’re like, ‘Where is that guy from earlier seasons?'”
The ‘Wingmen’ podcast
Tkachuk and his brother were the first active NHLers to start a podcast this past season.
Jack Richardson, who hosts live Sens game watch-alongs for podcast Locked On Senators, wasn’t a fan of Wingmen.
“I just think it was a nightmare from the start for the Ottawa Senators,” Richardson said. “And I am sure that the (public relations) team for the Sens would agree.”
Every month it seemed like Tkachuk was answering for something podcast-related. ‘Is your brother insinuating that you want out of Ottawa?’ ‘Did your dad (former NHLer Keith Tkachuk) throw one of your teammates under the bus?’ ‘How come you don’t have any Sens gear in your background?’
“I’m happy I don’t have to listen to it again, because I think it was dumb, it was garbage, and all it did was make me not feel great about the captain of the team,” Richardson said. “And again, I’m going to point to the team itself. There’s no way those guys in that locker room liked that he was doing that. I will not buy that any of them were comfortable with what he was doing because it didn’t benefit the Ottawa Senators whatsoever.”
Worse than Alexei Yashin, Dany Heatley sagas?
It’s undeniable that Tkachuk has turned himself into a villain overnight.
But how does his betrayal compare to the worst break-ups in franchise history?
Alexei Yashin sat out the entire 1999-2000 campaign in hopes of renegotiating his contract. An arbitrator would rule for Yashin to return to the ice the following season, and another year later he was dealt to the New York Rangers in exchange for Zdeno Chara, Bill Muckalt and a first-round pick that would turn into Jason Spezza.
Two-time 50-goal scorer Dany Heatley, adamant that he be moved in the summer of 2009, refused to waive his no-move clause twice, nixing respective trades with the Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers. Ottawa general manager Bryan Murray finally found a destination suitable to Heatley, moving him to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for Jonathan Cheechoo, Milan Michalek and a second-round pick.
Is Tkachuk’s stunt worse?
“Heatley leaving kind of signalled the end of that dominant era for that group of Sens and their timelines and everything,” Richardson said, “but I think it’s kind of the opposite here, right? Like, it felt like these guys are just knocking on the door. To leave that is really frustrating. To leave this fan base that is chanting your name every single time you touch the puck is a tough pill to swallow, man.”
As Garrioch reported for the Citizen, it became clear to the Senators that only a deal with Florida would be acceptable to the Tkachuk camp.
“He went to a division rival that came off back-to-back Stanley Cups, that all of a sudden just happens to have his brother on the team,” Richardson said. “It’s a weak move from Brady Tkachuk, in my opinion, because he’s going to a juggernaut.
“It feels a little bit icky to me as a Sens fan, especially watching the Carolina Hurricanes talk about, ‘Oh, you got to stick with it, stick with it, stick with it,’ and then this guy goes and joins the best team in the league, the Stanley Cup contenders entering next season.”
More recent high-profile splits — Daniel Alfredsson to Detroit in 2013; Erik Karlsson to San Jose in 2018 — had come down to money, and the ire of the fan base was directed at late owner Eugene Melnyk.
As Stephens points out, financial difficulties seem to be a thing of the past with current owner Michael Andlauer. The only person making this relationship complicated was Tkachuk himself.
“I think (this trade) is going to age a lot worse,” Stephens said. “I don’t think there’s ever going to be any mending; the villainy is only going to get worse. I can’t even imagine. Next year is going to be bad, but if he starts winning Cups, he’s going to become despised.
“He took the easy way out, instead of being the guy to lead a team of young players, a team that’s never won a cup before, a team in a Canadian market.”
https://ottawasun.com/ottawa-senators/he...aptain-brady-tkachuks-departure?tbref=hp
Prev
Linear Mode
