There have been exactly 1,163 regular season NHL games played at Canadian Tire Centre since the arena opened in January of 1996.
And the vast majority of those games – possibly in the neighbourhood of 95 per cent of them – are forgettable contests. Most games blend together and are hard to differentiate from each other, a function of the repetitive and tedious nature of the 82-game regular season.
It’s a lot of rinse and repeat.
But every once in a while, you get a magical regular season game that breaks free of those monotonous shackles, delivering emotion and feeling usually reserved only for the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Wayne Gretzky’s final game in Canada back in 1999.
Bobby Ryan’s storybook hat trick in his triumphant comeback on home ice in 2020.
And Saturday’s home game – featuring Linus Ullmark’s return to the crease after a 35-day leave of absence – falls into this category.
The anticipation for Ullmark’s return was steadily building throughout the week and when Travis Green confirmed his role as the starter on Saturday, it created an excitement and frenzy in the marketplace. We saw a great run on ticket sales in the hours leading into the game, pushing us well past our sellout number.
Our marketing team – led by Peter Shier and our videographer Ben Coles – put together a terrific video to capture the spirit of Linus’ return.
And when Linus was announced as the starting goaltender just prior to puck drop, the crowd inside Canadian Tire Centre rose to their collective feet for a standing ovation. Linus – keenly aware of the reception – tapped his heart with his glove hand five times in appreciation. It set the tone for a genuine love-in that lasted the entire evening between a sympathetic fan base and their netminder.
Linus was brilliant in the crease, stopping 26 of 27 shots to secure the 4-1 victory. And naturally, he was selected as the game’s first star inside the building.
Usually, Ottawa’s first star of the game skates back onto the ice, tosses an autographed stick into the crowd and heads to the bench for a live interview that is broadcast on our Bell HD screen.
This is a very easy thing to execute when it’s a home game being broadcast on TSN, because Claire Hanna will do the interview with the player and it will be simultaneously broadcast on television and inside the arena. It’s killing two birds with one stone.
But when it’s a game on a different network – such as Saturday’s game on Sportsnet – it requires a lot more juggling because Sportsnet does not send their reporter to our bench for the interview to be simulcast to the crowd inside. That forces our in-house host Keara Johnston to interview a different player than whoever Sportsnet requests.
Technically speaking, Sportsnet has the first crack at any live interview on a Saturday night since they are the national broadcaster. And of course on Saturday, Shawn McKenzie told me that Sportsnet indeed wanted to speak with Linus and since they had priority, it meant Keara needed to pivot to another guest.
So I went to our dressing room tunnel and was prepared to ask Linus to do the Hockey Night in Canada interview, which meant the game’s second star – Brady Tkachuk – would be the one doing the interview on our bench with Keara in front of the fans on the Bell HD screen.
Linus for Hockey Night.
Brady with Keara in front of the fans.
It was a simple plan.
But as soon as I relayed it to Brady, he threw a challenge flag.
“It’s gotta be Linus out there with the fans. It can’t be me,” Brady said. “Let’s give them what they want.”
It made total sense, but that meant Linus would now have to do multiple live interviews. One with Keara on the bench and another one a few moments later with Shawn McKenzie on Hockey Night in Canada.
I asked Linus if he was okay with that plan, because it’s never been done this way.
He took a deep breath and said he was good with it. I think he understood the moment and the connection to those fans.
And we had some extra time to play with, since Hockey Night in Canada wanted to tape the interview with Linus with the production truck and run it later in their show. As it turns out, they jumped immediately from our game to the conclusion of Vancouver-Toronto, so they really didn’t need Ullmark right away. (Truth be told it was disappointing that our viewers didn’t have an opportunity to soak in the emotion of what was transpiring on the ice, because I think it would have translated into television magic).
But the timing was such that it allowed us to pull off the rare double interview – where Linus not only did the chat with Keara on the bench, but he returned to the hallway to speak with Shawn McKenzie.
As Linus was preparing for the interview with Shawn, I appreciate that he actually adjusted the towel around his neck to make sure the Hockey Night in Canada logo was facing the camera. (With all the stuff that must have been swirling around inside his brain at that moment, I thought it was remarkable that he noticed that little detail).
After knocking off those two interviews, Linus went back inside the dressing room and did his third and final media session of the night – a long-awaited scrum with reporters. Linus hadn’t done any interviews since his lengthy sit down with Claire a couple of weeks ago.
Once that was in the rearview mirror, our dressing room was completely abandoned. It was just Linus and our PR staff – myself, Sylvain St. Laurent and Erin Campbell.
We could tell that Linus was clearly exhausted – both mentally and physically – and he needed some alone time to decompress. It was a tiring day that capped off what was clearly a gruelling month for Linus. But he passed that first test with flying colours, delivering a performance for the ages.
If you were at Saturday’s game and want to share your perspective on the night, we always love to hear from you via email at [email protected].
Or you can tell us about the most memorable regular season game you’ve ever attended at Canadian Tire Centre. It’s a topic we’ll bring up in a future episode of our Absolute Non Sens podcast.
Trivia time:
We hit the Olympic break on Friday, so I figured this would be the perfect time to drop in a Senators Olympic-themed trivia question this week.
You probably already know that Daniel Alfredsson is the only player to capture an Olympic gold medal while playing for the Ottawa Senators – accomplishing the feat with Sweden at the 2006 Winter Games.
But can you name the other six players to capture an Olympic medal while playing for the Senators?
Answer at the bottom of this column.
How did Eli Manning end up at our game on Saturday night?
When you work in the PR department of an NHL team, you really never know what each day is going to bring.
And I can promise you that none of us woke up on Saturday morning thinking we’d be arranging tickets and interviews for Eli Manning, but that’s the beauty of this job. The games might be a repetitive, but the job itself never is.
How did this all come together?
I suppose the first hat tip belongs to Graham Creech of TSN 1200, who shared with us on Friday morning that he saw Eli Manning at the Bell Sensplex in Kanata because their daughters were in the same hockey tournament.
That got the ball rolling on our end and we enlisted our social media manager Dan Chisholm to try and connect with Eli. Usually, our easiest avenue to connect with a celebrity, athlete or politician is sending them a direct message on social media using our official Ottawa Senators account.
But Dan ran into one significant issue: Eli Manning doesn’t accept direct messages on social media unless he follows you.
Dan is resourceful and didn’t allow this minor detail to get in his way. Using his football contacts – he used to work with the Atlanta Falcons – Dan was able to connect with NFL Canada and find an alternate route to contact Eli.
Within a short window of time, Dan received word that Eli was very interested in attending our game against the Devils with a handful of the families from his daughter’s hockey team.
Dan passed along his phone number and early in the afternoon, he received a call from a New Jersey area code that nearly left him speechless.
“Hey Dan, it’s Eli Manning.”
Dan managed to stop fan-girling enough to take down all the necessary information. Eli was looking for roughly a dozen tickets to the game and some parking passes for his group. We enlisted the help of our vice president of ticketing Brendan Duvall, who jumped through a lot of hoops to make this happen. Brendan had very limited inventory since the game was a sellout and we didn’t want to stick Eli and his group in the upper 300-level of Canadian Tire Centre.
Eli’s daughter’s team had a game at the Richcraft Sensplex at 5:30 p.m. and then they would make their way to Canadian Tire Centre. (I low-key love picturing Eli Manning stuck in traffic on the Queensway driving from Orleans to Canadian Tire Centre on a game night).
He mentioned that he likely wouldn’t arrive until after puck drop and the plan was for them to leave before the game ended – since they had so many young girls with their group. As such, we arranged for Brady Tkachuk to sign a jersey in advance for Eli and planned to present it as a gift.
Once Eli and his group arrived at the arena – just as Brady was scoring the opening goal – Dan peppered him with our list of requests.
We had four things we were hoping he would do for us in exchange for the tickets:
- Be available for a live interview with Hockey Night in Canada.
- Do an interview for our own social media content with Jackson Starr – who just happens to be a die-hard New York Giants fan.
- Accept the signed Tkachuk jersey with a photo op featuring our team president Cyril Leeder and Ottawa mayor Mark Sutcliffe.
- Be willing to be shown on our Bell HD screen during a TV timeout – possibly used in our Gabriel Pizza ‘Wheel of Cams’ promotion.
Without hesitation, Eli agreed to all four of these requests.
He walked into our building without any of the aura or arrogance that you might expect from a two-time Super Bowl champion. His outfit – which gave the energy that he just stopped at the Eddie Bauer outlet next door at Tanger – was the perfect fit for his demeanour. He was laid back and casual.
His interview with Jackson was a great window into his personality – just super warm and welcoming.
