Just as he was set to address the media the morning of his addition to the Senators Ring of Honour, Jacques Martin was surprised by Mayor Mark Sutcliffe with another honour in hand.
Sutcliffe proclaimed Jan. 24, 2026, as Jacques Martin Day in the City of Ottawa, honouring the 30th anniversary of his first game behind the bench as head coach of the Senators.
When Martin spoke, he admitted that Ottawa — where he considers his hometown — has been his favourite place to coach. Martin spent parts of 10 seasons behind the bench in Ottawa — his second stint coming as interim head coach at the end of the 2023–24 season — and remains with the organization as the senior advisor to the coaching staff.
“First of all, I’d have to thank a lot of people, I’ve been very fortunate with my association with the Senators,” Martin said.
“When I first came here, management, players, scouts, the one thing I remember the most from my days in Ottawa, in the summers a lot of time we’d get a little flack from the media for not signing some big free agents. But every year, I was blessed with having some young players, some young star that would develop into a real key performer for the Ottawa Senators,” he added.
“If it wouldn’t have been for the scouts, if it wouldn’t have been for the tremendous talent that was presented to me, we wouldn’t have achieved what we were able to achieve. So I think it’s a great honour for me today to be recognized, but there was a lot of people that touched, that influenced me, people like Roger Neilson… he was a mentor, I don’t think you could have a better mentor than a person like Roger Neilson. Just a real quality person with values, and [you’d] learn about life, he’d teach you about respect, and so on. I think I tried to put in place a lot of those things.”
A common thread when talking to players of Martin’s, current and former, is that Martin was not only a quality coach but also a quality human being. “It’s a testament to being a good person,” Lars Eller told Sens360 on Saturday morning. Martin was Eller’s coach during his first season-and-a-half in Montreal.
“To have coached as many games as he has, congratulations, that’s very, very impressive. You don’t stick around as long as he has without having some real strengths as a coach, having hockey knowledge, but also just being a good human being.”
