There is nothing fun about dealing with a PR crisis on a Friday afternoon.
Just when you start to think about relaxing and unplugging for a few hours, a negative story about your team can pull you right back into the front lines. That is exactly what happened to us shortly after 4 p.m. ET on Friday afternoon, when a bunch of prominent Ottawa fans started declaring they were deemed ineligible to join our new Verified Sens Army program.
This tweet from Kevin Lee at 4:19 p.m. ET garnered a significant amount of attention. Kevin, after all, likely owns more Sens merchandise than our entire equipment staff.
The idea of him being rejected in any sort of test measuring Sens fandom is downright ludicrous. What criteria could we be possibly using if Kevin Lee came up short? And what on earth is the Verified Sens Army program anyway?
Let’s dive in to kick off this week’s column.
In the spirit of full transparency, this Verified Sens Army program was launched as a mechanism to try and fill Canadian Tire Centre with Ottawa fans on nights when we host divisional rivals.
As we launched this program, Callum Fraser of Postmedia did an excellent job of highlighting the goal and intent of Verified Sens Army.
After last January’s visit from the Montreal Canadiens, we heard directly from our fans who were downright embarrassed that our home arena was overflowing with Habs jerseys.
We held focus groups, read the answers to countless surveys and tried to elicit as much feedback as possible on how to solve this issue.
You spoke and we tried our best to listen.
The top response we received is that our fans would like to ensure that tickets for these games are given to Ottawa fans first and at a reduced rate.
It would be very similar to the approach we used when we filled the Canadian Tire Centre with Senators fans for the three playoff games against Toronto in the spring of 2025. Our president and CEO Cyril Leeder sent out an impassioned letter to our season seat members in April of 2025, giving them access to additional playoff tickets with one important caveat – they could not be transferred. We asked for those tickets to be purchased on behalf of Sens fans and our season seat members responded to a point where our building was comfortably 80 per cent full of Ottawa fans for Games 3 and 6 of that series.
We want to do that again, but in order to replicate a similar strategy, it requires us verifying the fandom of potential ticket buyers.
In no way was Verified Sens Army designed to test your overall allegiance, loyalty or fandom of our hockey club. If it was, Kevin Lee would have passed with flying colours. We all know that.
Instead, it is a mechanism used to try and decipher if you are a fan who would be willing and able to purchase tickets to a rivalry game at Canadian Tire Centre and help fill the home crowd with Ottawa sweaters and jerseys.
In order to accomplish this, we used some of the following criteria:
- Have you purchased tickets to a non-rivalry Senators game at Canadian Tire Centre over the past couple of seasons? If you only purchased tickets for Montreal or Toronto, there is a good chance you’re a Habs or Leafs fan. We’re trying to weed those people out, so we need to be diligent and prudent here. But if you’ve got tickets in your account history for games against Nashville, Anaheim, Buffalo or Columbus, then it probably speaks to your Sens fandom.
So we asked people to fill out the survey using the email address they use to purchase Sens tickets on Ticketmaster. Many of the issues for the rejected applications – including Kevin Lee – came when they used a different email address than the one we asked for. His situation and hundreds others were resolved over the weekend and the incorrect e-mail address was behind the majority of the issues that we saw in the first 24-48 hours.
- Your postal code matters too, because once again, we’re using this program to try and get as many Sens fans into the Canadian Tire Centre for these rivalry games. This program only deals with this specific issue, so if you live outside of the Ottawa-Gatineau region, there is a good chance the system could reject you. But if you are telling us that you live in Laval or Mississauga and you’re a die-hard Sens fan who wants to drive up here and buy Sens tickets for a game against the Canadiens or Maple Leafs, we’ll make sure we take care of you. But we may ask for additional steps to ensure you’re not a masquerading Leafs or Habs fan who wants to jump in on reduced price tickets. We are meticulously going through every single rejected application to make sure we address this issue. But if you’re not planning on attending a rivalry game at the Canadian Tire Centre, don’t sweat it – this program is not designed for you.
- As a tie-breaker, we’ve asked for applicants to tell us about their favourite moment in Sens history. Many of the applications were rejected before it reached this stage, but this can help give us more insight and information into your fandom.
The bottom line is this: We’ve resolved hundreds of these issues over the weekend and our staff is prepared to handle hundreds more. We want all of you in the building and filling the Canadian Tire Centre with Sens jerseys for these rivalry games. We’re trying to take back our building for these games and as we saw on the weekend, this is not a problem that is unique to Ottawa.
So if you were rejected in the initial round of the application for the Verified Sens Army program – and you’re looking to attend a rivalry game – please reach out to either one of the following two email addresses:
If you desperately want early access and a reduced ticket price for these rivalry games, we’ll make sure we get you cleared.
And if anybody had an awkward or frustrating experience with this rollout, we genuinely apologize. If there was a miscommunication or misunderstanding about the goal of this program, that’s on us – not you.
We’ll make sure we get this fixed and we’re hoping the end result is more Ottawa fans in the building when we host the Maple Leafs and Canadiens in the back half of the schedule.
Trivia time:
A total of eight players have played 300+ regular season games with the Senators and never missed the playoffs?
Can you name them?
Answer at the bottom of this column.
Alumni weekend was a rousing success
The trivia question above was asked to me by a former Sens player while we stood in a buffet line at an alumni luncheon on the weekend. (I would reveal his identity, but he happens to be one of the answers to the question).
On Saturday night, we honoured the years ending in the number ‘seven’, since they have brought a tremendous amount of luck to the franchise. The 1997 squad was the first to qualify for the playoffs, the 2007 team reached the Stanley Cup Final and the 2017 team reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals.
We had three players to represent each team dropping the puck ahead of the game against Utah: Wade Redden, Mike Fisher and Craig Anderson. For Fisher, it was his first time officially being welcomed back inside the building since he retired nearly 10 years ago.
Full kudos to our vice president of marketing Peter Shier, who made the decision on Saturday afternoon to put those three players in the new Hometown Remix jerseys for the ceremony. That was the first time those jerseys were worn inside Canadian Tire Centre and it was a very nice touch to have three popular players from the past to be the ones to unveil them.
The collision of old and new was also evident after the game, when a handful of our alumni headed downstairs to the back of our locker room following the 4-2 win over Utah. One of the coolest scenes of the night was watching players like Tim Stützle and Drake Batherson hang out in the players’ lounge with the likes of Craig Anderson, Wade Redden and Dean McAmmond.
Michael Andlauer and Steve Staios attended the alumni luncheon on Saturday and spoke to the whole group, talking about the importance of their place in franchise history. Over the past two years, the organization has worked really hard to re-establish the bond between alumni and the hockey team. This weekend was another terrific example of how much love and admiration exists for our former players.
So rest assured, we’ll be planning more evenings and events like this in the future.
Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.
Sticking with the alumni theme, Callum Fraser from Postmedia had a pair of moving and excellent features on Clarke MacArthur last week. The first piece looked at Clarke’s remarkable journey as he battled to return from a series of concussions in 2017. And the follow-up piece is a look at Clarke’s current life, where he regularly hangs out with athletic icons like Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky. If you get a chance, please read both of these pieces.
If you love that 2017 Senators team, our Andrew Wilimek also caught up with Bobby Ryan to chat about his memories from that remarkable run.
Our November issue of Bodycheck is now available exclusively on our app. Sylvain St. Laurent catches up with Mike Condon about his streak of 27 straight starts, plus fun features on Drake Batherson and Dom Nicoletta.
Over at Coming In Hot, Alex Adams had a chance to go one-on-one with Jake Sanderson, chatting about the defenceman’s mindset and the pursuit of constant improvement.
Trivia answer: The correct answers for the trivia question: Peter Schaefer (315 GP), Jason York (380 GP), Magnus Arvedson (393 GP), Andreas Dackell (401 GP), Shawn McEachern (454 GP), Shaun Van Allen (456 GP), Marian Hossa (467 GP) and Wade Redden (838 GP). (And in case you were wondering, it was Yorkie who asked the question in the buffet line).
