These Senators have 'been through some shit,' but hope's finally here

Thomas Chabot scanned Madison Square Garden, absorbing the action with a quiet focus. It was May 5, 2024, the Rangers and Hurricanes were engaged in Game 1 of a second-round playoff series, and Chabot was in street clothes, watching from an MSG seat like any other paying customer.

Throughout the game, Chabot ran the gamut of emotions alongside his wife, Marion. The career Senators defenseman felt jealous. Pissed off. Weird. Out of place. As a professional hockey player, he is supposed to be in the heat of the battle in May, not observing it from the stands.

At the same time, Chabot felt alive as he paid close attention to puck battles and momentum swings. He was in New York for wrist surgery and had purchased the tickets on a whim. Chabot, then 27, had never seen - let alone competed in - an NHL playoff game, and he wanted to feel playoff hockey.

"It put a little fire in me, not going to lie," Chabot recalled April 10 from his dressing-room stall inside the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.

Ottawa, not long ago a laughingstock in NHL circles, had clinched a playoff spot for the first time in eight years two nights earlier, and Chabot still had the unmistakable glow of a 500-game NHLer finally making it to the "big dance."

Across the room, injured captain Brady Tkachuk smiled as he talked to reporters about his imminent return to the lineup and the thrill of clinching. Brother to a Stanley Cup champion, Tkachuk's witnessed plenty of playoff battles live. Yet, he's another 500-game guy with a blank postseason resume.

Drake Batherson, the third longtime core member, is up to 391 games without a taste. Tim Stutzle - 367 games. Artem Zub - 306. The list goes on and on.

"We've been through some shit here," Stutzle said recently.

This is a story about those miserable non-playoff years and the impact competent ownership and management can have on a team and its fan base.

The last seconds of Senators playoff hockey features Pittsburgh's Chris Kunitz unloading from the high slot. All five Ottawa skaters slump their shoulders as the puck sails past goalie Craig Anderson and into the net's top right corner.

The Sens dropped Game 7 of the 2017 East final in double overtime, a Stanley Cup Final date with an unremarkable Predators team vanishing in the process.

Next came Chabot's rookie season, then Tkachuk and Batherson debuting in 2018-19. The club lost a league-high 107 games during those two transitional seasons. While no athlete wants to lose, players are generally understanding of rebuilds and retools, especially in a hard salary cap league such as the NHL.

The "shit" Stutzle spoke about relates mostly to the soap opera that engulfed the Sens organization for the bulk of the playoff drought. "It was tough," Batherson said. "There was so much stuff going on off the ice that had nothing to do with what we were doing on the ice. It created headlines."

Nearly every one of them can be traced back to former owner Eugene Melnyk. Known as a tyrannical boss, Melnyk was notoriously overbearing, impulsive, and cheap. He famously threatened to relocate the franchise in late 2017 amid the NHL's 100th anniversary celebration, a marquee event for the league and team on Parliament Hill. On sacred ground in Canada's capital city, Melnyk took a shot at fans for low attendance figures and, on the topic of relocation, he said, "if it doesn't look good here, it could look very, very nice somewhere else."

Fan-funded "#MelnykOut" billboards soon popped up around Ottawa.

Pierre Dorion, promoted from assistant general manager to GM in 2016, was a secondary agent of chaos. He made disorientating trades and signings while consistently fumbling the public relations component of the front-facing role.

In 2018, Dorion was asked during a TV hit to name something he's optimistic about, and after a long pause he mustered the vaguest of three-word sentences. "We're a team," he said. Three seasons later, he pronounced the rebuild "done," only for the Sens to finish 27 points out of the 2022 playoffs.

A number of off-ice issues arose in the late 2010s. Among them: a group of players getting caught on video mocking an assistant coach during an Uber ride; significant others of Erik Karlsson and Mike Hoffman feuding in private and in court; and assistant GM Randy Lee getting charged with harassment.

The team provided false hope on the ice by picking up steam after slow starts before ultimately failing to sustain a playoff-caliber points pace. Chabot's played for three permanent head coaches and two interims in eight seasons.

"At some point, man, you're thinking that it's not going to happen," Chabot said of even the idea of making the playoffs at certain points in the past.

"There's seasons where we were 30 points out of the playoffs with 25 games left, and you're like, 'Oh, there goes another year ...,'" added Batherson, a 26-year-old top-six forward. "And those are tough to play in - when you know you're out of it, but you still have to show up and try your best."

Melnyk died in March 2022, and his daughters Anna and Olivia put the team up for sale later that year. The Sens were suddenly in demand, with A-list actor Ryan Reynolds, rapper Snoop Dogg, and R&B artist The Weeknd all representing prospective ownership groups. The Melnyk sisters ultimately chose a lower-key group led by billionaire Michael Andlauer, who purchased the franchise for $950 million. (The sisters maintain a 10% minority stake.)

"Stability is not a word that has been synonymous with this organization," Andlauer said in a Dec. 31, 2023, news conference introducing ex-NHL defenseman Steve Staios as full-time GM, having fired Dorion a month earlier.

"So, my New Year's resolution, as we enter 2024, would be to make stability part of our fans' vocabulary for years to come."

Lifelong Sens fan Devan White trekked 16 hours to the last playoff game in Ottawa, driving his wife's 2005 Toyota Corolla from Sydney, Nova Scotia. He and a buddy sat in the lower bowl, in one of the corners, six rows from the ice.

The post-Game 6 buzz was palpable after a Sens overtime victory.

"When we won and everybody's exiting the building, that camaraderie was something else," White, 34, said. "I'm not big into any other sports. Ottawa is my only team. And it can be very much a love-hate thing: If it's not going well, it's not going well. That day? It was the highest of highs. I'll never forget it."

White traveled to Ottawa again seven months later for the Parliament Hill festivities. Melnyk's comments stung. "I'm in the stands watching the alumni game, thinking to myself, 'I should be their bread and butter. I'm the right age group.' You feel so disengaged at that point," White said. "It's the opposite of feeling like you're being welcomed. He's talking about moving the team."

Mark Silver is a Day 1 Sens fan who attended the franchise's inaugural game on Oct. 8, 1992. The 52-year-old resident of Ottawa suburb Barrhaven swears the home crowd has never been louder than the first playoff game in town - 1997, Sabres versus Sens at the Corel Centre. He, too, was at Game 6 in 2017.

And he, too, was fed up by the end of the Melnyk era.

"When I heard Andlauer talking for the first time, when he started to explain himself, I almost welled up in tears," Silver said. "It's so stupid that something like that could impact your life so much, but when you spend 82 nights a year watching a team, spending a bunch of money at games, scanning Twitter all day, listening to podcasts, and it's run by some crazy ..."

Those final seasons of Melnyk and Dorion felt "fake," Silver added. Ownership didn't want to pay core pieces, drama lurked around every corner, and the on-ice product barely progressed. The Sens weren't on a level playing field.

Current players are less blunt about the transition. Chabot and Batherson noted they're incredibly lucky to do what they do for a living, no matter the environment. ("Best job in the world," Chabot said.) Still, Andlauer and his commitment level has left a strong impression on the room. The strength and conditioning center was gutted and upgraded. The food's better and healthier. The new training staff, led by director of player health and performance Matt Nichol, is highly regarded. Hockey operations has added manpower, as well.

"When Mr. Andlauer came in, from top to bottom, everything went to the mindset of trying to be the best we can be every single day," Chabot said.

"Say there's a guy who's a free agent and he wants to visit Ottawa. He'll see all of these beautiful facilities. That matters," Batherson added. "There's a whole lot more to it behind the scenes that people who just come to games or watch on TV don't see. Everything's top notch here now, and that's huge."

As forward Shane Pinto put it, the 32-team NHL is extremely competitive, so you can't fall behind. Your operation has to be, at the very least, average. "You have to try and get everything in a good place," he said of taking care of players. "It might not seem like it's a big deal, but little things do add up."

Old wounds were ripped open in January when the Senators' Twitter account posted a photo of team mascot Spartacat wearing a split jersey (half Sens, half Quebec Nordiques) to help promote a pair of upcoming preseason games in Quebec City. The fan base laid into the organization for failing to read the room - Hey, don't you guys remember what we've been through lately!?

The controversy blew over fairly quickly because Andlauer, CEO Cyril Leeder, and vice president of communications Ian Mendes all owned the mistake.

In separate interviews with theScore, White and Silver brought up Mendes unprompted. The former go-to Sens beat reporter has been a soothing presence since taking a PR job with the team last offseason. He's an accessible executive who understands the complexities of Sens fandom.

"Ian Mendes has been the voice of reason in Ottawa for 20 years. You listen to Ian Mendes," Silver said. "It's almost like he's one of us," White added.

Nevertheless, the Spartacat fiasco was a reminder of the distrust created by the previous regime. "It's going to take time," White said, "to get over it all."

The Sens entered 2024-25 with the NHL's third-longest postseason drought, trailing the Red Wings (now up to nine seasons) and Sabres (14). It's fitting Ottawa's return to relevancy reignites the Battle of Ontario - Leafs vs. Sens.

The Sens' coaching staff is no stranger to the provincial rivalry stoked by four playoff meetings in the first five years of the 2000s. First-year head coach Travis Green was a Leafs center; assistant coach Daniel Alfredsson, ostracized by Melnyk but welcomed back to the organization with open arms early in Andlauer's tenure, starred for the Sens; and senior advisor Jacques Martin ran the Sens' bench.

Green is another pillar of stability. His role in Ottawa's turnaround this season can't be overstated. For the first time in forever, the Sens are a structured, detailed hockey team. The players appreciate his honest, straightforward approach and, in Chabot's words, his passion for teaching "winning hockey."

"Since the start of training camp, it's been black and white from the coaching staff. There's no gray," Chabot said. "You're either in or you're in the way."

"He doesn't let anyone off the hook," Pinto said of Green.

While offense generation is a concern, Ottawa year over year has improved its special teams performance significantly and brought down its nightly goals-against number (in large part because of better goaltending). The club's .729 points percentage from March 1 to the end of the regular season ranked third in the NHL. It also owned a season-long 22-6-7 record in one-goal games.

Dorion, a scout by trade, laid the foundation with a few home-run picks. The first round of the 2020 draft alone produced two legitimate stars in dazzling forward Stutzle (third overall) and all-around defenseman Jake Sanderson (fifth), plus agitating winger Ridly Greig (28th). Staios has supplemented the core with starting goalie Linus Ullmark and a handful of useful veteran skaters.

In short, this franchise has a credible sturdiness to it. A step-by-step plan - including the hopeful completion of a long and winding path to a new arena.

The next step is to challenge the Leafs despite heavy underdog status. The hockey world is wondering about Tkachuk's influence. His tour-de-force performance for Team USA at February's 4 Nations Face-Off event opened eyes outside the Sens' room and affirmed suspicions inside it. In the playoffs, where every 50/50 puck is a war, Tkachuk's someone any team would kill for.

"He's going to be f-----g flying around," Pinto said.

"F---. If I was a defenseman facing him every night, I'd absolutely hate it," Chabot said. "That's the reality of it. He's a headache to go up against."

The Sens' marketing slogan for this season is "Heart Over Hype." It seems especially apt heading into a playoff meeting against a provincial rival that's under immense pressure to advance and, no matter how they're playing, is the Ontario team with a larger fan base, deeper pockets, and richer history.

The Sens and their fans don't need the hype. They, finally, have hope instead.

"It's going to be awesome to share this with them," Tkachuk said last week of the die-hards, his first career playoff beard beginning to show signs of life.

"The people that have stuck with us through the tough moments - the lows - it's going to make it that much better. We don't want to stop now. It's one checked box that we did to get here, but there's a lot more that we want to accomplish."

John Matisz is theScore's senior NHL writer. Follow John on Twitter (@MatiszJohn) or contact him via email ([email protected]).