After taking a brief holiday hiatus, I’m back to start pumping out this column on a weekly basis in 2026.
Considering the objective of this column is to provide some transparency around our communications department, it’s perfect timing that we kick of the new year by analyzing our midseason press conference with Steve Staios from this past weekend.
We had a number of interview requests from the media to speak with Steve over the past week or two. And since we were hitting the halfway point of the regular season, we thought it would be good timing to have him available to the entire media contingent.
Our strategy around making our general manager available to the media is somewhat straightforward and is utilized by a number of other NHL teams. We like the cadence of having Steve speak at five points during the season:
- The opening of main training camp
- At some point close to the 20-game mark (generally in the window of U.S. Thanksgiving)
- Around the midway point of the season (usually early January)
- After the trade deadline (early March)
- At the conclusion of our season
In an ideal world, I was hoping we could execute this midseason availability on Tuesday. We would have just played our 41st game of the season against Detroit and our team would be flying to Salt Lake City that day, leaving a bit of a hole in the media schedule. And truth be told, I prefer to schedule these types of press conferences on non-game days.
However, Steve indicated to me that he was leaving for our amateur scouting meetings on the weekend, so Saturday morning was the best time to execute this session with reporters. I fired off a note to our beat reporters via our What’s App group chat on Friday afternoon to make sure they had enough notice to cover this availability. (In case you’re wondering, we don’t have a clever or punny group chat name. It’s simply called ‘Senators postgame’ – which is exactly what you’d expect from us around the Ottawa media).
I spent a good chunk of time with Steve on Friday, discussing potential topics and questions that would be presented to him by our media contingent. And then on Saturday morning, the rest of my communications team – Sylvain St. Laurent and Erin Campbell – and Dave Poulin joined Steve to go over everything one last time.
We almost treat that as a dress rehearsal for the main press conference. Myself and Sylvain get to toss on our old journalist hats and fire away with all the potential questions we think might get asked. Our main goal with that exercise is to overprepare Steve. Our biggest fear as a communications professional – and I’m still fairly new to this side of the fence – is to have a question come out of left field that you didn’t anticipate. And then the person that you’ve prepared is hung out to dry.
The session with Steve on Saturday ran 26 minutes – which is a touch longer than I had anticipated. (Our comms team likes to have fun by guessing the length of the press conference. I went with 18 minutes, so I was clearly well short of the mark).
As we anticipated, there is mixed reaction to the press conference. When you’re sitting outside of a playoff spot in January, the fan base is going to be frustrated and restless – even when our record is 6-3-1 in our last 10 games.
Most fans and media jumped over the “We’ll contend when we’re ready to contend” quote from Steve. Julian McKenzie from The Athletic made it the anchor of his story.
Graeme Nichols had some analysis around that in his ‘Thoughts in Bold’ column for The Hockey News.
And if fans and media want to have a laser focus on that quote, I understand it. I worked in the industry long enough to know that short quotes or sound bytes are the things that get the most traction.
But the quote from Steve at the start of the press conference was probably a bit more insightful when it comes to his current view of the team.
“We have higher expectations for ourselves,” he said. “What are the expectations for our group? We talked about taking a step last year. We want to take another step this year towards wanting to be a contending team.”
I think that’s a pretty accurate picture of where our team is right now. And truly the time for us to be judged is in the spring – when we can definitively say if we’ve taken that step or not.
But if there is something you didn’t appreciate or understand from that press conference, I would highly encourage you to send me an email to [email protected].
I’ll try my best to respond and share your sentiments with our hockey department.
Trivia time:
Stephen Halliday picked up an assist against Washington – a nifty helper to set up David Perron. It was the sixth assist of Halliday’s career in his 15th NHL game. So for this week’s question I’m wondering: In addition to Stephen Halliday, can you name the other six Ottawa rookies who managed to pick up at least six assists in their first 15 NHL games in the salary cap era? (Since 2005-06).
Answer at the bottom of this column.
Absolute Non Sens podcast guest: Paul MacLean
There is one question that I’ve always been dying to ask Paul MacLean.
Why did you dress Jakob Silfverberg ahead of Mark Stone in Game 6 of the 2012 playoff series against the New York Rangers.
I finally had a chance to pose that question to him on the latest episode of our Absolute Non Sens podcast.
Like all the other episodes we’ve dropped, this one was a lot of fun and had some deep cuts that Sens fans will appreciate.
- We open with a ‘bug-eyed, fat walrus’ reference.
- We dive into the night his doppelgänger Paul MacClone showed up behind the bench.
- He talks about the woman who burst into his exit press conference and yelled out, “Paul MacLean I (expletive) love you!”.
- And Paul has a super fun story about that giant portrait of Queen Elizabeth that used to hang in the Winnipeg Arena.
We’ve got some podcast episodes in the hopper and ready to release over the next few weeks. But as always, if you’ve got any ideas, suggestions or feedback for our little show, please send us an email to [email protected]
Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.
When my former Carleton journalism student Natasha Baldin reached out to pitch a story for the Ottawa Citizen about her participating in our ‘Hot Dogs from Heaven’ promotion, I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out. But Natasha was one of my favourite students, so I wanted to give this story the green light. And her wit comes out in this very fun feature – which taught me there is actually a technique to tossing those hot dogs down from the rafters at Canadian Tire Centre.
Want to see Jordan Spence and Drake Batherson go head-to-head in Mario Kart? We’ve got you covered.
There was a lot written about Linus Ullmark’s leave of absence last week. I thought Graeme Nichols had the most thoughtful piece on the subject in The Hockey News.
Random thoughts:
We’ve got an Amazon Prime broadcast set for Monday evening against the Detroit Red Wings. I love how Amazon pushes the envelope and tries unique things with their broadcast to give it a different look and feel. You’ll see some of that again on Monday, as they’ll have Drake Batherson mic’d up for the pre-game skate, with the studio panel conducting an interview with him on the ice. I think Drake’s personality plus Amazon’s creativity should make for some good television.
A final thought:
I want to end this column on a more sombre and serious note and acknowledge the passing of Tysen Lefebvre over the Christmas holidays. I had the pleasure of knowing Tysen through the Capital City Condors for many years and he was one of the brightest lights in our community. Tysen passed away very unexpectedly on Christmas Day, surrounded by loved ones at Queensway Carleton hospital. In 25 years on this planet, Tysen had an impact that far exceeded his age. He helped raise over $1 million for Make-A-Wish Foundation when he was a teenager. Right up until his passing, Tysen was a fixture as a part-time employee on game nights at Canadian Tire Centre. I will genuinely miss my hallway conversations with him because I’m not sure there was anybody who was more proud to work at our arena than Tysen. Rest in peace my friend. You made our community a much brighter place.
Trivia answer:
The six Ottawa rookies who also picked up at least six assists in their first 15 NHL games in the salary cap era: Jake Sanderson (7 assists), Shane Pinto (7 assists), Brady Tkachuk (7 assists), Curtis Lazar (6 assists), Patrick Wiercioch (6 assists) and Brandon Bochenski (6 assists).
