Senators shaking off doubters with strong start

BOSTON -- It was less than a month ago, as the Ottawa Senators began to gather for the 2026-27 season, for captain’s practices and the Senators Foundation Charity Golf Tournament, for training camp and the start of their first season since 2017-18 without Brady Tkachuk, that they emphasized that they would have to find ways to win without him, that they would have to find them quickly.

Two games into the season, they have found ways.

So far, in the post-Tkachuk era, the Senators are 2-0-0, having beaten the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday and the Bruins on Monday, the latter by a resounding 4-1 score at TD Garden. They have allowed just three goals while scoring seven, an early answer to all those who doubted their abilities to continue the upswing they started over the past two seasons.

Not that they doubted.

“The belief’s always been there for us in this locker room, no matter who is in the lineup each night,” forward Drake Batherson said. “We play for each other and every guy wants each other’s best. When we’re doing that, we’re a tough team to beat.”

Part of that is being without Tkachuk, who had 463 points (213 goals, 250 assists) in 572 games over eight seasons in Ottawa, but part of that is also about being better than they have been.

Last season, the Senators started 2-4-1 in their first seven games.

The season before, it was 6-7-0 in their first 13.

“We didn’t like the way we started the last couple years,” Tim Stutzle said. “We always had to dig each other out of a hole. We were always down points trying to make the playoffs and it was really important for us to have a good start. I think two games is nothing. We’ve just got to keep going, keep making those team efforts, and then we’re gonna keep winning.”

As Stutzle pointed out, two wins in two games does not mean that the Senators are set for this season, especially not after they saw goalie Linus Ullmark taken out after the second period on Monday after a collision with JJ Peterka in the crease, something that coach Travis Green called “precautionary.”

But it is a start.

“It had nothing to do with the offseason, but we did talk about our start this year,” Green said. “We kind of revisited how we thought we played last year and had gotten away from our game that made us successful the first 10 games of the year last year, put an emphasis on it. But we’ve still got to go out and play and play the right way.”

They did. And so, again, they won.

“It’s huge,” Batherson said. “It’s probably one of our best starts in the last nine years since I’ve been here. So it’s obviously big.”

On Monday, that began with Stutzle, whose first two goals of the season came rapid-fire, first with a short-handed goal at 7:39 of the first period after a turnover by David Pastrnak led to a 2-on-1 with Michael Amadio. The second came on a second turnover, a second 2-on-1, this one taken all the way down the ice by Stutzle, the puck crossing the line three seconds after that same Bruins power play had ended.

The goals came in 1:43, the fastest two goals by a member of the Senators since Tkachuk did it in 0:48 on Feb. 13, 2024.

“He’s such a dynamic, skilled player that can skate,” Batherson said of Stutzle. “He’s so agile. You put all those things together along with his IQ, it’s a fun player to watch.”

Stutzle’s three points — he would add an assist on Batherson’s goal at 1:06 of the second — marked his 33rd career three-point game, which tied Tkachuk for fourth most in franchise history, passing Erik Karlsson.

But as Tkachuk is tied, as he is left behind, as his records fall, the Senators are taking back ownership of themselves after a summer that saw their former captain expedite his way out of town.

For the Senators, for Ottawa, it is early. But the Senators look strong. There’s no question about that.

They have one more game on the road, at Little Caesars Arena against the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; DSN, TSN5, RDS2), before their home opener on Thursday against the Philadelphia Flyers at Canadian Tire Centre.

There’s no guarantee that the Senators will be undefeated when they get back to Ottawa, though the Red Wings are 0-2-0 with their own rough start to the season.

But wouldn’t that feel good? Wouldn’t that feel good to head home with an unblemished record as they start on a new epoch in Senators hockey?

It would.

“We’re really confident and if we keep playing the same way, like we ended last year, I think we have a good chance to win every night,” Stutzle said. “We’ve just got to keep doing it over and over and play as a whole team. It’s been a lot of fun so far.”