One of the most shocking parts of this NHL offseason — and there have been a few of them — came when the Ottawa Senators shipped captain Brady Tkachuk down to the Florida Panthers.
It came just weeks after Tkachuk insisted he was committed to the team.
And, in fact, it was so shocking, even Senators head coach Travis Green says he was surprised by it.
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“It was probably about a month after the season, three weeks that (Senators GM Steve Staios) brought me up to speed, and he asked me if I was surprised,” Green recalled during an appearance on Daren Millard and John Shannon’s 100% Hockey podcast. “Oh man, a little bit, of course.”
Green — who previously coached the Vancouver Canucks and New Jersey Devils — said that the Senators’ young core, which included Tkachuk, was one of the reasons he took the job in the Canadian capital.
So to hear that he had asked to be traded and he was going to be moved at some point — you know, unfortunate is a word I probably will use a lot,” Green said. “I can’t speak for Brady; I was a little surprised; a little, you know, would I say mad? A little bit.”
Honestly, can you blame him?
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While things had gotten tough for Tkachuk at the end of his time in Ottawa, there’s no question that the Sens are a team on the rise. They made the playoffs this season, and while they got waxed by the eventual champion Carolina Hurricanes (honestly, who didn’t though this year), it showed a serious step in the right direction.
So, to lose a centerpiece like Tkachuk is tough.
But…
There’s no question that, whether it was legitimate or fueled by the media, the attention around Tkachuk’s status with the team was a distraction.
One that the team doesn’t have any longer.
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So, perhaps that will help them make another run to the playoffs again. The team brought in Andre Burakovsky and William Eklund, which rounds out a solid lineup that includes Tim Stützle, Drake Batherson, Shane Pinto, Jake Sanderson, Dylan Cozens and some veteran leadership from Claude Giroux, who signed a one-year deal to return to Ottawa last month.
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