Mendes Monday Musings

I’m often asked about the biggest differences between my current job and my old ones.

In my time at Sportsnet, TSN 1200 and The Athletic, my job was to share information quickly and as widely as possible.

But in my position within the communications department of the Ottawa Senators, I’m usually at the opposite end of the spectrum, where I’m trying to guard information and prevent it from leaking publicly.

Case in point?

Our signing of Shane Pinto a four-year contract extension last week.

On Wednesday evening, I received a phone call from Steve Staios. A phone call after 9 p.m. from the general manager is usually going to be newsworthy because Steve rarely phones me to ask what I ate for dinner. Steve shared that the Pinto deal was done and he was asking how we wanted to get this out in the public realm.

As much as I would love to make our local media spring into action and start working at 10 p.m. on a Wednesday night, we agreed that holding the news until morning would be the best course of action.

I thought we could get some pop on social media if we could be the first ones to report the news or at least hint that something was imminent.

To accomplish that, however, required a ton of secrecy. I was petrified of this leaking out in some fashion late on Wednesday evening, but all the parties involved agreed to keep this guarded until the morning and there was probably fewer than 10 people who were in the loop. I even told Steve I didn’t want the contract terms on Wednesday night because I didn’t want to be a suspect if this thing leaked out. (Plausible deniability for the win).

I asked some of our team to come into the office before 8 a.m. and since I couldn’t explicitly tell them why they were needed, I just tagged this GIF of a Ford Pinto exploding – hoping they would get the reference.

On Thursday morning, I worked closely with our social media manager Dan Chisholm to create a plan for dropping the news. Before the press release went out and the information was shared with the big-name NHL insiders, we wanted to have a few minutes to tease the news on social media.

We toyed with a few concepts, including just showing a can of beans being spilled.

In the end, we settled on taking a simple picture of Steve and Shane inside our ‘Absolute Non-Sens’ podcast studio. Since Brady Tkachuk launched his own podcast the day before, we thought we would have a little bit of fun with that concept. So we sat the two of them down in our studio and just dropped the caption, “New podcast dropping.” And tagged on the tongue-wagging emoji.

Within 60 seconds, my phone was blowing up with texts and phone calls from media members asking to confirm the news.

It was a great reminder of how quickly news and information spreads in this era. But we were able to tease that news first without it leaking out publicly, which is a testament to our internal process.

If you want to see some of the behind-the-scenes of that photo shoot with Steve and Shane, check out our video on Instagram.

My favourite part is when Shane says, “Why are you guys making us do awkward stuff?”

Don’t worry Sens fans, we’ve got four more years of awkward content planned for Shane.

Trivia time:

Shane Pinto has worn multiple jersey numbers with the Senators, but can you name the only player to wear four different jersey numbers with Ottawa?

Answer at the bottom of this column.

This week’s podcast guest: Travis Green

We’ve stuck with players so far on our ‘Absolute Non-Sens’ podcast, but we’re going to venture behind the bench this week.

We recorded a very fun and relaxed interview with Travis Green for the podcast, hoping to show off a different side of the head coach. Among the topics Jackson and I hit on with Travis:

• The unique challenges of being colour blind as a head coach.

• On building relationships with the media and what he learned from his time in Vancouver.

• How he binges TV shows like White Lotus and Sons of Anarchy as a stress relief.

• Why he missed seeing David Volek’s epic OT goal to eliminate the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1993.

This is a chance for you to see the Travis Green we get to experience on a regular basis: Sarcastic, funny and very good-natured. The episode will drop on Wednesday and you can catch the other ones here.

Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.

As I mentioned earlier, Brady and Matthew Tkachuk launched their own podcast last week, with the debut episode of ‘Wingmen’ dropping on Wednesday. My man Sylvain St. Laurent chatted with Brady about his new podcast venture to get a sense of what this is all about. (I am disappointed Sylvain didn’t push Brady on why the captain thought it would be a good idea to drop his podcast episodes on the same day that ‘Absolute Non-Sens’ comes out).

The gang from The Athletic put forward the best Hall of Fame candidate for each NHL franchise. Their submission for Ottawa: Erik Karlsson.

Our Hockey Fights Cancer night always evokes a lot of emotions, as fans share their personal journeys with the illness. Graeme Nichols of The Hockey News opened up about his melanoma diagnosis – and how he got very lucky with the timing.

Meeting the first (and possibly only) Sens fan from Wisconsin

Last season, our Sens communications X account traded notes with an Ottawa fan named Chase from Wisconsin.

I was intrigued by his handle: @WiscoSensFan.

This was well before we had four prospects committed to playing at the University of Wisconsin, so I was fascinated someone from that region was a die-hard Ottawa fan.

Chase shared that he was born in Minnesota and before the Wild joined the league, he became a Senators fan in the late 1990s. He fell in love with the Alfredsson-Hossa-Redden-Chara version of the Senators and has cheered for the team from afar ever since.

Last week, he and his wife Elizabeth made the trek to Ottawa for Chase to finally watch the Senators in person at Canadian Tire Centre for the first time. It’s even more impressive they were able to leave their four daughters – all aged six and under – back with family in Wisconsin to make this happen.

I love this type of dedication and devotion for our team.

So we invited Chase and Elizabeth to come to our practice ahead of Saturday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings. And then I gave them a full tour of the press box on the upper level of Canadian Tire Centre at night. It was a cool experience for them and I think Chase really appreciated some of the behind-the-scenes stuff – like getting to watch Tim Stützle working on his craft of faceoffs and meeting some media members like Dean Brown, Gord Wilson and Bruce Garrioch.

I love hearing stories of Sens fans making their first trek to Ottawa – especially from a long distance – to experience their first game at Canadian Tire Centre. If you want to flag any of these upcoming visits to me, please send an email to [email protected].

We love doing special things for fans who travel long distances to watch us play in Ottawa. (And no, this doesn’t include fans coming in from Orleans for a game).

Random thoughts:

Anze Kopitar played his final regular season game in Ottawa on Saturday night. When the longtime Kings captain announced this would be his final NHL season, we wanted to do something to recognize his remarkable career. So on top of giving him a scoreboard acknowledgment, we decided to invite the Slovenian ambassador to Canada – Simon Konobelj – to the game with his family. And thanks to Matthew Franczyk with our team and Shawn May of the Los Angeles Kings PR department, Kopitar agreed to meet with Konobelj after the game. It was a really cool moment to see them pose together with a Slovenian flag in between the two dressing rooms at Canadian Tire Centre. Kopitar spent a lot of time speaking with them, not just treating it as a quick photo opportunity. It spoke volumes about a player who has handled himself with class and dignity throughout a career that will absolutely land him into the Hockey Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

Trivia answer:

Peter Schastlivy wore four different numbers over the course of five seasons with the Senators. In the 1999-00 season, he wore No. 56 and the following season he wore No. 16. The tricky one is he played only one game in 2001-02 – and was given No. 13 for that game. And then in his final two seasons with the Sens, he wore No. 19.