In our previous trips to Carolina, the media lift has never been heavy.
Raleigh is one of those cities that doesn’t have a huge contingent of hockey writers, which means our post-game media sessions for regular season games at Lenovo Center usually just include our team reporter Jackson Starr.
And that’s what made Sunday’s media availability at our team hotel so unique.
We had a dozen reporters show up to speak with Tim Stützle, Thomas Chabot and Travis Green.
Granted, that’s a tiny number in comparison to our playoff series against Toronto from last spring. But for an Ottawa-Carolina series in this current media landscape – where reporters hardly ever travel – it was a refreshing scene.
What’s even more encouraging is that we had a sizable number of local media members who made the trek down from Ottawa to Raleigh for the first two games of this series.
Many of our regular reporters – like Brent Wallace, Alex Adams, Graeme Nichols, Julian McKenzie and Max Jolicoeur – were on the scene yesterday for our media session in Raleigh. CBC Ottawa even sent a crew down here, which produced this story on all the Sens fans in Carolina from reporter David Fraser.
The playoffs are a different animal, where a Hurricanes-Senators matchup draws a lot of attention and eyeballs.
So this week I thought it would be fun to take our readers behind the curtain to see what it’s like to prepare for a playoff series in a PR and communications department.
Prior to the start of each series, the NHL arranges conference calls to make sure everybody is on the same page. We had a Zoom call with the Carolina Hurricanes PR staff on Thursday, which included a handful of representatives from the NHL.
We went over all the media and broadcasting policies, which was probably old hat for Mike Sundheim and his Carolina PR staff who have been in the playoffs for eight consecutive seasons. But this is still relatively fresh for our department in Ottawa, so it’s nice to get reminders of all the rules and regulations.
For starters, there is a distinct flow to the post-game media sessions. Each team is required to bring personnel over to a formal press conference area, in the following order:
- Losing team coach
- Winning team player(s)
- Winning team coach
This requires a lot of coordination between PR departments, so we set up a group text to make sure things flow smoothly. On Saturday afternoon, for example, we texted into the group chat to let the Hurricanes staff know that we were bringing Travis Green to the podium. That gave them an idea of timing so they could plan on bringing Frederik Andersen and Logan Stankoven over to the same room. And as soon as Travis’ session with reporters was over, we texted to let them know the room was all theirs.
We also have a group text set up with all the national broadcasters since we have three networks – Sportsnet, ESPN and TVA – calling these games from Raleigh. This way, we know which players they want to interview in between periods or after the game. And there is also a priority list here. Let’s say both Sportsnet and ESPN want to do an interview with Brady Tkachuk in the hallway after the first period. Which network gets the priority to execute that interview and which network must pivot to a different guest?
Down here at the Lenovo Center, the priority list goes as follows:
- ESPN
- Sportsnet
- TVA
So on Monday night, for example, if both ESPN and Sportsnet want to do a live intermission interview with Tim Stützle, ESPN would have priority and Sportsnet would have to shift to a different guest.
But back at the Canadian Tire Centre, the priority list shifts to:
- Sportsnet
- TNT (they will be doing our games back home)
- TVA
Simply put: American broadcasters have priority when we’re in the United States, but Sportsnet takes that role when we’re back in Canada.
There are also strict rules about media availabilities on days where the team doesn’t hold a practice. Neither team skated on Sunday, so we had to coordinate with the Hurricanes PR staff to make sure our sessions don’t conflict with each other. And the home team gets to choose the time for their media availability first and the visiting team must work around that.
After Game 1, the Hurricanes informed us that Rod Brind’Amour would speak at 11:30 a.m. at Lenovo Center on Sunday morning. We had to build in time to make sure reporters could cover that session and still make it to our hotel for our availability, so we chose a starting time of 12:30 p.m. for a session with Travis Green, Thomas Chabot and Tim Stützle.
During the Stanely Cup playoffs, you must have your head coach available to the media, along with a couple of key players too. The only exception you have is when there are two consecutive days off in a series – like we’ll experience on Tuesday and Wednesday in between Games 2 and 3. In that instance, we are only required to make Travis Green available to the media at some point on Tuesday – but if we’re not practicing, no players have to speak to reporters.
As you can see, there are a ton of rules and protocols baked into the Stanley Cup playoffs.
And the further you advance, the more complicated it gets – especially since the number of media covering your series probably doubles in size each round. But once you reach the conference final, the NHL’s PR department comes in and handles a lot of these logistics.
Do you have a question about media policies and access in the playoffs or otherwise? Send them our way to [email protected]
Trivia time:
We’ve got a Game 2 on the horizon on Monday here in Raleigh, so let’s go with a playoff-themed question.
Can you name the four players who have scored an overtime-winning goal for the Senators in Game 2 of a playoff series? (Hint: It’s two forwards and two defencemen).
Answer at the bottom of this column.
Inside our small tribute to Joe Bowen
This feels like it happened about two weeks ago, but it’s only been five days since Joe Bowen broadcast the final game of his remarkable career in Ottawa on Wednesday night.
Bowen has been the voice of the Maple Leafs since 1982, a 44-year run with a single team that is almost unheard of in this day and age.
When we found out that Bowen would be travelling to Ottawa to call his final game in person at Canadian Tire Centre, we knew we should acknowledge the moment in some manner. But given the tension and animosity that often envelopes games with the Maple Leafs, this was something that needed to be handled with some degree of caution. It’s a bit of a tightrope walk to execute something like this.
The decision was made to give Joe a brief scoreboard tribute during the first TV timeout of Wednesday night’s game. And we came up with a fun twist: We thought we’d show some Bowen calls of iconic Ottawa goals against the Maple Leafs from the Battle of Ontario.
Daniel Alfredsson’s goal in Game 5 of the 2002 playoffs – moments after he hit Darcy Tucker – is often cited as one of the most explosive moments in the provincial rivalry.
This Mike Fisher goal to keep the Senators alive in a Game 6 overtime on home ice was magical for Ottawa fans.
And Ottawa fans always get a kick out of watching Curtis Joseph’s meltdown after this Rob Zaumner goal in the 2000 playoffs.
Only problem with trying to track down these audio clips featuring Bowen’s voice?
None of them exist anywhere.
We spent time trying to track these down with TSN 1050 and The FAN 590 in Toronto and unfortunately, their archives only go went back to around 2013 or so – well after the glory days of the Battle of Ontario.
So we settled on three other moments to highlight featuring Bowen’s voice:
Evgenii Dadonov’s OT goal to cap a furious comeback from a 5-1 deficit and give the Senators a 6-5 win at Toronto during the 2020-21 season.
Dylan Cozens’ shorthanded goal from Game 5 of last year’s playoff series.
And Jake Sanderson’s OT winner from Game 4 in that same series.
The end result was this montage and scoreboard appearance, all of which was captured by a national TV audience on Sportsnet. There was a tremendous ovation inside the building, which is what we really wanted – a special moment to cap an impressive broadcasting career.
It was really nice to see Ottawa and Toronto fans take a moment and salute something in unison. And if we’re being honest, we may never see that again in the month of April between these two fan bases.
Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.
Travis Green received a late push for the Jack Adams voting, thanks in large part to articles like this one from Alex Adams with Sportsnet.
The theme of ’25 best friends’ has been big around these parts, ever since Jake Sanderson uttered those words in a post-game interview with TSN. Our Andrew Wilimek paints a great picture of that camaraderie, by taking readers inside the dressing room for this story last week.
Daily Sens games now available on our app
Our app has been up and running for about a month now. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and there has been great engagement with our fans.
We’ll slowly be rolling out new updates and features and I wanted to draw your attention to a particularly fun one that quietly dropped last week. We’ve got daily Sens games going on the app now, powered by Daysies.
Click the ‘More’ button on the bottom of the app and then you’ll see an option for ‘Daily Sens Games.’
Then you’ll see options to play six different games: Trivia, Petal Puck, Scramble, Lie Detector, Crossword and a Word Search.
We’re in the early stages of these producing these games, so there is a lot of room for us to grow and improve. If you’ve got an idea for a fun game you’d like to see us incorporate into the app, please shoot us an email to [email protected]
And if you haven’t downloaded our app yet, you can do so here.
Trivia answer: The four players with an OT-winning goal in Game 2 of a playoff series for Ottawa: Jean-Gabriel Pageau (Game 2, 2017 vs NYR), Dion Phaneuf (Game 2, 2017 vs BOS), Chris Neil (Game 2, 2012 vs NYR) and Joe Corvo (Game 2, 2007 vs BUF).
