With the end of daylight saving time, it was fitting that we decided to turn back the clocks on our jersey look this weekend.
On Saturday night at the Bell Centre, we wore our regular road white jerseys – but with black helmets.
It’s a subtle callback to the team’s look from the Heritage Classic in Vancouver in 2014. That game saw the club wear the cream-coloured ‘Heritage O’ jerseys with black helmets.
(And the team wore that look again for a regular season game the tail end of the 2013-14 season.)
Predictably, the reactions were mixed on this. A brief sampling from my timeline on X on Saturday revealed that people’s views on our new look were just as polarizing as opinions on cilantro:
“Looks so much better, Ian. Amazing how such a small change can make such a huge difference. Well done.”
“Why? This is stupid.”
“Looks great! I prefer the black buckets.”
“Terrible. Sorry.”
“I like it Ian, it gives an old school feel, would love it with the heritage jerseys.”
“It gives the illusion of someone with no helmet on. I keep expecting the ref to blow the whistle. But I’m probably just crazy.”
For those asking for the explanation behind the change, we just wanted to try something different this season with our look for a couple of games. These types of changes require advance approval from the NHL and our opponent, so we’ve had to map these games out well in advance.
Our plan is to try this look two more times on the road this season: On December 27 in Toronto and January 14 at Madison Square Garden against the Rangers.
I’ve seen people suggesting we should try gold-coloured helmets with our red alternate jerseys. (Yes, I see you Stuntman Stu.) Or that we should consider trying different coloured gloves to change up our look.
Do you have a unique or cool idea for our jersey look? Send it my way via email at [email protected]
I’ll pass along the best ideas to our marketing department and hockey operations staff. (The worst ideas might be exposed in a future column, so be wary of your submissions.)
Trivia time: The Senators hit the road for a two-game road trip to Boston and Philadelphia this week. With that in mind, here is a tough question: Who is the only defenceman ever to play for the Senators, Bruins and Flyers?
(Answer at the bottom of this column)
Next guest on Absolute Non-Sens: Drake Batherson
Our bi-weekly rollout of the Absolute Non-Sens podcast rolls on this week, with our Drake Batherson episode dropping on Wednesday.
We recorded this one a couple of weeks ago with Drake, touching on a bunch of non-hockey related topics:
- We dive into his habit of saying, “Yeah, no” to open his answers to questions in a media scrum.
- Can he name all the famous people who were born in Fort Wayne, Indiana like him?
- Is he on the radar to play in the American Century celebrity golf tournament?
- Would he live with his sister if she was traded to the Ottawa Charge?
- And he explains why his autograph is almost a perfect copy of his mom Deeann’s signature.
Our goal with our podcast is to give you a completely different look at our players off the ice. If you missed them, you can watch the Tim Stützle episode here and the Jake Sanderson one here. (And a reminder you can download the episodes on your favourite podcast platforms).
We love hearing your feedback on how this is going, so please keep those emails coming into [email protected]
Let us know what questions you’d like us to ask the players or ideas for future guests that may not be on our radar.
Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.
Nick Jensen as an ostrich. Ridly Greig as the Riddler. And Thomas Chabot as a Costco worker. Wondering what each player dressed up as this Halloween? Our social team has the answers here.
Alex Adams from Sportsnet.ca has an excellent look into how Jake Sanderson has evolved into a leader in the absence of Brady Tkachuk.
Lars Eller did a fantastic walk-off interview with Claire Hanna on Thursday after the 4-3 win over the Flames. And our Andrew Wilimek followed up with this strong piece on how Ottawa has been a perfect fit for Eller – on and off the ice.
Random thoughts:
The annual fathers trip is taking place this week when we hit the road for Boston and Philadelphia. This is always a fun trip, as it gives a chance for the players to say thanks to their dads (or mentors) who have helped them along the way. If you have any ideas for content or stories you’d like to see us generate with the dads, shoot us an email.
With the Sens trailing 2-0 in the first intermission, Sylvain St. Laurent – my partner-in-crime in the comms department – and I decided to each have a hot dog at the Bell Centre to try and change our luck. Those two hot dogs translated into two goals for us in the second period, so we decided to do the same thing in the next intermission. We ate a combined four hot dogs, but it’s nowhere close to the record of 19 hot dogs that were once inhaled by a single member of the Senators media relations team in the early 2000s. (That person may or may not be currently the vice president of communications for another Ontario-based NHL team).
Trivia answer: Andrej Meszaros is the correct answer to this week’s question. He played 246 games with Ottawa, 192 games with Philadelphia and squeezed in 14 games with the Bruins during the 2013-14 season. (As an aside, only three forwards have played for these three teams: Patrick Brown, Randy Robitaille and Nate Thompson).
