The Ottawa Senators had already beaten the Florida Panthers 5-1, buried Brady Tkachuk under three periods of booing and then played his old theme song on a loop in the dressing room. Their social media account decided the evening still had room in it.
They went and found a nature video.
The clip belongs to Fishingarrett, a Florida TikToker whose content consists largely of wandering around the Everglades encountering things most people would run from. One of his more popular efforts involves spotting an endangered Florida panther in the wild. Ottawa took that footage, pasted their own players’ faces onto it, and stamped a large L across the panther.
The caption did the rest.
“Yoinking a couple of points tonight,” the Senators wrote, tagging the original creator for good measure.
Where did the Senators’ video come from?
Fishingarrett has built a substantial following posting wildlife encounters from south Florida, and his panther clip was already circulating well beyond hockey before anybody in Ottawa got hold of it. Using a genuine Florida panther to mock the Florida Panthers is the sort of thing that either works immediately or not at all. This one worked.
READ MORE: The Senators had one last dig at Brady Tkachuk
Team accounts have been in unusually sharp form this season. Carolina marked a win in Philadelphia by posting that they had won more games in the city that month than the Flyers, Eagles and Phillies combined, and the New Jersey Devils put NJ Transit departure times on the jumbotron while leading the Rangers 6-1.
Ottawa’s evening had been building to something like this. Supporters threw Tkachuk’s old jerseys onto the ice, drowned out his tribute video and produced a chant list that ran to a dozen entries. The 5-1 scoreline was arguably the least memorable part of it.
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