Brady Tkachuk feels the crushing disappointment of Senators’ season, but he hasn’t lost hope

The NHL All-Star break can provide a nice mental reset during the dog days of winter. But not for the Ottawa Senators.

They got their reset Dec. 18, when they fired coach D.J. Smith and tabbed Jacques Martin to take over in a second tenure with the team. The All-Star break? It came at an inopportune time. In what has been a crushingly disappointing season, the Sens were finally starting to show a pulse, going 6-2-2 in their past 10 games. That isn’t the kind of momentum you want to halt. Especially when you don’t play again until Feb. 10.

Captain Brady Tkachuk, in Toronto as Ottawa’s All-Star representative last week, did his best to make the most of the time and search for positives. While he remains protective over Smith, who never took Ottawa anywhere near a playoff berth in his four seasons and change, Tkachuk acknowledged that Martin has brought something different, highlighting the “calmness, the details, the game management.”

Martin has 1,315 games to his name as an NHL head coach, plus 111 more in the playoffs. He won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 1998-99 and took the Sens to the playoffs eight consecutive seasons between 1996-97 and 2003-04. Tkachuk believes Martin’s influence “has shown a ton of late,” and the team’s play has indeed been much tidier. The Senators rank in the bottom quarter of the NHL in scoring chances allowed and expected goals against per 60 at 5-on-5 on the year but, during their 6-2-2 run, they’ve allowed the fifth-fewest scoring chances per 60 and have the eighth-best expected goals against per 60 at 5-on-5.

But “We’ve seen this movie before” doesn’t even cut it for Ottawa at this point. They’ve cranked out this story enough years in a row to build their own Cinematic Universe. They finished 2020-21 with a 10-3-1 stretch; 2021-22 with a 7-2-1 stretch, and were 19-12-5 from Jan. 21 onward last year. These are obviously cherrypicked stats, but the point is that, seemingly every year, these teams hint at a breakout, then fail to deliver one the ensuing autumn.

Tkachuk understands at this point that a second-half hot streak simply isn’t sufficient for a franchise that last reached the Stanley Cup playoffs seven years ago. It guts him, and he doesn’t hide it.

“I think I can speak on behalf of the whole group: we all had high hopes for this year, high expectations, and that we’re not living up to it, it’s frustrating,” he said. “It feels like it falls on the top guys and leaders. For me, what hurts the most is, I want to do this, not only for ourselves and our team, but for the community of Ottawa that have been waiting for a while, the faithful fans that have stuck with us. We want to provide those positive memories that they’re waiting for. They deserve it. The hardest part of this whole process is, I feel like I’ve disappointed a lot of loyal fans, and I don’t like that feeling. So hopefully we can change it, and I very much believe that we can.”

Tkachuk, 24, has done his best to drag his teammates into the fight, figuratively and literally. He’s on pace for a career-high 38 goals, and after dropping the gloves a career-high eight times last season, he’s already at six fights through 47 games this year. The frequent fisticuffs are not a conscious choice, however, more a reactionary thing as he tries to spark his team.

“I don’t really think there are as many set up fights that go into games as there were in the past,” Tkachuk said. “It’s all feel of the moment, all situational stuff, and I didn’t realize if I’ve fought more this year or not [until you told me]. I just take it day by day, game by game and don’t really think about it if it’s right there.

“The way my dad [Keith Tkachuk] played and the way my brother [Matthew Tkachuk] and I were when we were younger, there were fights every day or every other day. So I’ve always been around it. It’s been normal to us. I definitely don’t want somebody who has less experience fighting for me. I can fight my own battles and stick up for teammates who need me. When that opportunity comes, I’d rather it be myself than somebody else.”

Tkachuk is the team’s leading goal scorer and protector and cheerleader, so if any young core member on this underachieving team has set the correct example to follow, it’s probably him. But he can only do so much. This season was supposed to be linemate Tim Stutzle’s superstar coronation, and he’s stuck at 11 goals. Defenseman Thomas Chabot has struggled to stay healthy. Center Josh Norris hasn’t looked as dangerous as hoped in his return from a major shoulder injury. Shane Pinto missed half the season due to his sports-wagering suspension. Between Tkachuk, Stutzle, Norris, Chabot and Jake Sanderson, Ottawa has five players signed to eight-year deals at AAVs of at least $7.95 million, and they’ve combined for 0.0 games of playoff experience.

And that’s why another late-season surge can’t be the lasting impression of 2023-24. Good vibes in the summer? Sorry, the Sens fans have had enough of those. They want results. It feels like the only thing that will stop GM Steve Staios from exploring major changes to the core group will be a playoff berth. Ottawa’s odds sit at 7.4 percent. But Tkachuk isn’t ready to concede the season.

“The whole group’s disappointed, but you can only control what you can control, and that’s each day the effort,” he said. “We are where we’re at, but it’s about the recent hockey that we’ve played and what we’ve shown and what we’ve expected all along. You’re never out of it until you’re out of it. You’ve just got to keep playing that way and keep going.

“We still have a lot of belief that we can prove people wrong coming out of the break.”