Get ready for a couple of quirky start times to kick off your week with the Ottawa Senators.
Let’s start with Monday’s game, which will feature a 7:45 p.m. local time puck-drop at Canadian Tire Centre for our game against the Boston Bruins.
This is our first Prime Monday Night Hockey broadcast of the season and since it’s a national game, the start time gets pushed back slightly.
We’re obviously aware of the potential conflict with Game 3 of the World Series, but we were never approached by Amazon Prime to consider switching the start time. To help our fans inside Canadian Tire Centre, we’re planning on showing live action from Dodger Stadium during our intermissions on our centre ice big screen.
Our vice president of marketing Peter Shier was in contact with Sportsnet and Major League Baseball and received permission for us to show the game to our fans during the intermissions on Monday evening. So those of you coming to the game can sit back and enjoy Game 3 of the World Series from your seat inside Canadian Tire Centre during the first and second intermission. The voices of Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez echoing inside our arena in late October? Sign me up.
And on Tuesday, you might have two screens going if you’re looking to watch both the Senators-Blackhawks and Game 4 of the World Series. But our game from the United Center is a 7:45 p.m. local time start in Chicago – which means an 8:45pm Eastern start for our Ottawa viewers on TSN 5.
The reason for this delayed start is because it’s the second annual ‘NHL Frozen Frenzy’ – a night where all 32 teams are in action. The league has 16 games slated for Tuesday with the earliest one commencing at 6:00 p.m. Eastern and other games staggered in 15-minute intervals after that one.
We’re up at 8:45 p.m. Eastern time, which I suppose will be good training for when we play some late games out in California next month.
Trivia time: Linus Ullmark skated 200 feet down the ice at Capital One Arena on Saturday and almost gave us our first Senators goalie fight since Ray Emery’s memorable night in Buffalo in 2007. Ullmark only ended up getting a two-minute minor penalty for leaving his crease to join the fracas, but it left me with a question: How many Senators goalies have received a five-minute major penalty in a game?
(Answer at the bottom of this column)
Why did we choose to wish the Blue Jays good luck on social media?
I want to peel back the curtain and discuss our decision to wish the Toronto Blue Jays good luck heading into the World Series.
Cheering on a Toronto team is certainly considered taboo around here and we absolutely considered the blowback we could receive. This was not a decision we took lightly.
But we were willing to make an exception for the Blue Jays, considering they are Canada’s team in Major League Baseball. It’s no different when the entire country rallied around the Raptors during their championship run in 2019. (The Senators also wished the Raptors good luck and congratulations when they secured an NBA title six years ago).
The Canucks, Flames and Jets all had some Blue Jays-related content on their social media platforms this week too.
We knew our messaging on this had to be firm, but a touch playful – leaning into the Toronto-Ottawa rivalry. After debating several iterations of the wording, we settled on this: ‘The only way we’re okay with supporting blue and white – Let’s go Blue Jays!’.
Our social media manager Dan Chisholm has a great feel for what is going to land well, but we wanted the extra layer of eyes on this one. So I took this potential wording to our senior management team on the business side to ensure they were on board too.
It was generally well-received on social media and that was really our intention. This feels like a historic moment in Canadian sports and we want our Sens fans to know it’s okay to cheer for a Toronto team in this one hyper-specific instance.
And we had some fun with our players with their World Series predictions too.
Have any questions or thoughts about the way we handled this? 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.
Michael Amadio is soft-spoken and does not seek out the spotlight. But our Andrew Wilimek did a nice job of going deeper with Michael and learning a bit more about why he signed in Ottawa and what he’s like with his teammates.
James Duthie was in town to promote his new book ‘Certified Beauties’ last week. While he was on the TSN set with Claire Hanna, he shared an amazing story from his book about Brady Tkachuk and a prank played on Claude Giroux. James’ book is littered with fun stories like this one.
Gavin Giroux’s cute homemade calendars have raised more than $12,000 and Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch has the backstory here. And if you’re still interested in purchasing one, you can do so here – while Gavin’s calendar is still in stock.
Random thoughts:
A big thanks to the readers who wrote in last week to ask if they could receive one of Gavin’s calendars. I really liked the submissions from Benjamin and Kevin, so check your inboxes and you should have received a note from me on how to pick up a calendar.
We continue to receive great ideas and feedback for our new ‘Absolute Non-Sens’ podcast. Keep sending those emails into [email protected]
I can share that we had an excellent podcast recording with Paul MacLean in our studio last week. We’ll drop that episode at some point in the coming weeks and I think Sens fans will appreciate his candour as we take a trip down memory lane with the Jack Adams award winner. Other episodes that we’ve already recorded: Drake Batherson, Travis Green and Kyle Turris.
Trivia answer: Four Senators goalies have received a five-minute major penalty in a game. If you’re old enough, you can probably recite the first three answers easily.
Ray Emery for his aforementioned fight in Buffalo in 2007.
Patrick Lalime got into a pair of scraps in his Ottawa career. This memorable one from the Philadelphia brawl game in 2004 and this underrated bout against Byron Dafoe in Boston during the 2001-02 season.
Jani Hurme versus Felix Potvin was a terrific goalie fight that was part of a line brawl in 2001. (The best part is my pal Todd White helping Hurme remove his glove midway through the fight).
But I highly doubt anybody got the fourth answer to this question, even if you’re a die-hard Sens fan who can remember everything about this team from the 1990s. That’s because Don Beaupre got smacked with a five-minute major for high-sticking in a game against the Flyers in 1995.
Amazingly enough, I was able to find grainy footage of this incident online.
If you went four-for-four on this week’s trivia question, you’re either a liar – or you’re Don Beaupre himself.
