Brady Tkachuk had just spent three periods being booed by a building that once adored him, watched his own tribute video get drowned out, and seen his old jerseys land on the ice. A reporter put it to him afterwards that the reception from the Ottawa Senators crowd had been fairly ruthless.
Tkachuk turned it into a question of his own.
“Were they ruthless?” he asked back, in jest. “No, it was good. Shows the passion that they have.”
From there he reached for the language of someone closing a file.
“One chapter closed, and like I said, just this exciting chapter that we’re living in. So it was nice to be in front of this passionate fan base,” Tkachuk said. “I mean, it’s a lot of great moments. There’s a lot of ups and downs, but yeah, nothing but great things that I’ve experienced here and that my family has experienced here as well.”
Why did Ottawa boo Brady Tkachuk’s tribute video?
The video itself was about as inoffensive as a club could make one, focusing entirely on his charity work across eight seasons in the city. The crowd buried it anyway.
What followed made the point sharper than any chant did. The same building then played a welcome-back message for Lars Eller, who spent a single season in Ottawa, and the boos turned to raucous cheers. An eight-year captain got worse treatment than a one-year rental.
READ MORE: Brady Tkachuk’s response to the boos was pure theatre
Tkachuk did his best to spoil the evening regardless, scoring on the power play halfway through the first period and collecting another round of abuse for it.
The Senators took over after that, winning 5-1 in what was comfortably their best performance of the young season. Tim Stutzle, the man the crowd insisted was better, had plenty to do with it.
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