Brady Tkachuk went on his Wingmen podcast the day before returning to Ottawa and made supporters an offer. Throw his old No. 7 onto the ice if you like, but know that every one of them would end up with the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, where he had volunteered during his eight seasons with the club.
They threw 37 of them.
Ian Mendes, vice president of communications for the Ottawa Senators, confirmed the figure in his weekly column on Monday, and then delivered the complication.
“I reached out to the Panthers on the weekend to give them the total number of jerseys we collected, as Brady had indicated he wanted to make a donation to BGC Ottawa around those jerseys,” Mendes wrote. “For the record, a lot of those jerseys were in damaged or unusable condition, so we’re not going to physically pass them along to BGC Ottawa.”
Tkachuk jerseys disposed of by Ottawa fans:
| Method | Number |
|---|---|
| Thrown onto the ice | 37 |
| Traded in at the team store | 261 |
| Total | 298 |
Why aren’t the Tkachuk jerseys being donated?
A fair number of them arrived at the ice in no condition to be given to a child. The club hasn’t itemized the damage, and nobody has put a figure on how many of the 37 are unusable, but enough were ruined that Ottawa decided against handing the pile over at all.
Supporters who wanted to make a point made it rather more thoroughly than the plan allowed for.
READ MORE: Quinn Hughes got one more round of boos after the game
That isn’t necessarily the end of the donation. Mendes passed the number to Florida precisely because Tkachuk wanted to give something to BGC Ottawa based on it, which leaves the door open for the gesture to happen in another form.
The 37 also represent a fraction of the total purge. The Senators ran a trade-in promotion offering 40 percent off new merchandise, and collected 261 Tkachuk jerseys through it.
Tkachuk, who bought dinner for around ten of his former teammates the night before the game, scored the opening goal in a 5-1 defeat and has seven goals and five assists through 12 games for Florida.
Read more:
