Brady Tkachuk is set to return to his old stomping grounds for the first time since forcing his way out of Ottawa over the off-season as the Florida Panthers get set to visit the Senators on Wednesday night.
Tkachuk was sent to the Panthers on June 21 to play alongside his brother, Matthew, after the former Sens captain indicated to team ownership that he would not be signing an extension following the conclusion of his eight-year, $57.56 million contract in 2028.
Ottawa received four draft picks from Florida in the deal, including the ninth overall selection in this year’s draft that was later sent to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for promising forward William Eklund as the Senators front office began a roster re-tool for a team looking to make its way back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the third consecutive year.
The trade put an end to a months-long saga that routinely called Tkachuk’s long-term future with the organization into question. Rumours ran rampant in the media over his desire to pack his bags for an American market, despite both Tkachuk and Sens general manager Steve Staios doing their best to dispel the notion up in the months leading up to the deal.
Tkachuk arrived in Ottawa as the fourth overall pick in 2018 and would develop into the face of the franchise that helped usher in an era of hope following a lengthy rebuild.
Now, after 572 games across eight seasons, 463 points, two playoff appearances, an Olympic gold medal, and a messy divorce, the 6-foot-4, 226-pound bruising winger returns to the nation’s capital as a villain, with a hostile Senators fanbase waiting to welcome him back to the city he pledged fealty to as recently as last April following a first-round playoff sweep.
“Once we get there, it will hit a little more,” Tkachuk said of his impending return to Canadian Tire Centre. “Right now, it still feels like a game you kind of circle on the calendar for, I bet, a lot of people that can’t believe it’s here. Once we land in Ottawa, step foot and see some of the guys, it’ll be like, ‘Alright, it’s here.’
“It’s going to be nervous, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a weird but cool experience. I’m looking forward to it.”
Tkachuk got off to a slow start to begin his Panthers tenure, going without a point in his first five regular-season games with his new team. Since then, he has quickly settled in with hat tricks in two of his past three games, helping earn him the NHL’s first star of the week.
With his highly-anticipated return set for Wednesday night, here is a look at Tkachuk’s eight years with the Senators, and the events leading up to the off-season split between the two.
Brady Arrives in Ottawa
Coming off of a 28-43-11 season just a year after their run to the Eastern Conference Final, the Senators would have the fourth overall selection in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft, taking Tkachuk out of Boston University to officially kickstart their rebuild.
Tkachuk, the fourth-ranked skater in the class, made the jump to the NHL immediately after being drafted, choosing to forego his three remaining years of NCAA eligibility with the Terriers.
In his second career game on Oct. 10, 2018, Tkachuk scored two goals and added an assist in a 7-4 loss to the Los Angeles Kings, offering a glimpse of his talent as one of the franchise’s future building blocks in the years to come.
He would continue to have success over the course of his rookie campaign and finished the year with 22 goals - setting an Ottawa record for goals by a teenager - and 45 points in 71 games, being named to the NHL’s All-Rookie team and coming in fifth place in Calder Trophy voting.
Despite his efforts, the rebuilding Senators played to a 29-47-6 record and would miss the playoffs for the second straight year.
Tkachuk would post a second straight 20-goal season as a sophomore and was named as an injury replacement at the 2020 All-Star Game for Toronto Maple Leafs star Auston Matthews, his first of four appearances at the midseason classic with the Senators. The year would be cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Ottawa not being among the 24 teams returning to play in the bubble.
The Senators would head into the 2020 draft with the third and fifth overall picks, selecting German forward Tim Stutzle and American blueliner Jake Sanderson, players that would go onto grow into franchise centrepieces alongside Tkachuk and lead the rebuild in Ottawa.
Heading into the 2020-21 campaign, Tkachuk would be named as am alternate captain to begin his third season. He recorded another solid season with 17 goals and a team-high 36 points over the course of the 56-game season.
While the Senators never came close to getting back to the postseason in Tkachuk’s first three years in the NHL, it was clear he was on the path to stardom and had it in him to be the driving force in turning around the franchise’s fortunes.
Captain Tkachuk
Tkachuk sat out training camp ahead of the 2021-22 season while awaiting a contract extension, eventually inking a seven-year, $57.56 million extension with the Senators just hours before Ottawa played their season opener.
A month later, he was named as the franchise’s 10th captain at the age of 22, the youngest-ever in Senators history.
In December, Tkachuk would notch his first career NHL hat trick in a 4-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning, and would head to the All-Star Game as an injury replacement for teammate Drake Batherson later that season.
He would set career-highs across the board with 30 goals and 37 assists for 67 points in 79 games played, but once again, Ottawa would miss out on the playoffs with a 33-42-7 record.
The following two seasons would follow a similar pattern: Tkachuk enjoying personal success with a pair of 30-goal seasons, but the Senators ultimately falling short as they continued to look for a way to put it all together.
Ottawa would go onto fire D.J. Smith as head coach in December of the 2023-24 season, replacing him with Jacques Martin on an interim basis.
Tkachuk would go onto set what still stands as his career-best mark with 37 goals under Martin, also recording a positive rating for the first time in his first six years in Ottawa.
At the end of the year, Tkachuk said that the season was “probably the most difficult year I’ve had, to date, mentally,” also adding that he was ”sick and tired of losing.”
Return to the Playoffs
Travis Green was brought in to coach the Senators ahead of the 2024-25 season as Ottawa looked to turn the corner with a new voice behind the bench.
Tkachuk opened the year on a six-game point streak and had six goals and seven assists in nine games played in Oct. 2024.
By the end of December, Tkachuk was sitting on 16 goals and 19 assists while the Senators head into the new year with a 19-15-2 record.
His production stalled in January with an 11-game pointless streak, but the Senators were squarely in playoff contention when the league paused for the 4 Nations Face-Off in February.
Tkachuk was named to Team USA for the tournament, and made his mark in a rivalry game against Canada in the round-robin in which he, Matthew Tkachuk, and J.T. Miller lit up the Bell Centre with three fights in the first nine seconds of the game.
The U.S. would go onto beat Canada 3-1 in an appetizer before the North American foes would meet again in the final. Tkachuk would score in the opening period of championship game, but it would all go for naught as Connor McDavid scored in overtime to send Canada to a narrow 4-3 victory.
Tkachuk would go onto finish the regular season with 29 goals and 26 assists for 55 points, and Ottawa secured the top wild card spot in the Eastern Conference to finally return to the playoffs after six painstaking seasons.
After 512 career games, Tkachuk would finally get his first taste of playoff hockey as the Sens geared up for a first-round series against the Maple Leafs in the Battle of Ontario.
The Senators dropped the first two games of the series, but Tkachuk would score his first career playoff goal in Game 2. He would add another marker in Game 3, but his efforts could not stop the Senators from staring down a 3-0 series deficit against their bitter rivals.
In Game 4, he recorded an assist and was named the night’s second star as Ottawa staved off elimination. During his postgame lap, Tkachuk gestured down at the ice at Canadian Tire Centre and told fans “We’ll be back”, guaranteeing a victory in Game 5.
He followed up on his promise, recording three points in a 4-0 win in Toronto as the Senators returned to Ottawa with a chance to force a deciding Game 7.
The Senators would go on to fall in Game 6 of the series, despite Tkachuk scoring his fourth goal of the series in the loss.
“It’s devastating,” he said following the series-deciding game. “I really believed. It’s a tough pill to swallow right now.”
Tkachuk also stated his desire to remain with the organization, telling reporters “I want to play here, I want to be here.”
“I really believe in everybody in this organization that everybody wants to win here. That’s what makes it fun. Everybody has the same goal and wants to accomplish the same thing,” he said.
While the season ended in heartbreak, the Senators headed into 2025-26 with a newfound sense of hope and optimism that things were finally headed in the right direction.
Those feelings were quickly dealt a blow when Tkachuk suffered a thumb injury that would require surgery just three games into the season.
While recovering from surgery, Tkachuk announced the launch of his ‘Wingmen’ podcast with co-host Matthew Tkachuk, a show that would soon draw the ire of the Senators fanbase.
The Senators would get their captain back after a 20-game absence on Nov. 28, and would head into the Olympic break in February at 28-22-7.
Olympic Gold
Tkachuk was previously named as one of six players to head to the Olympics over the off-season, and was heading to Milano Cortina as part of a talented American team with a legitimate chance to win gold.
He registered three goals and two assists in six games for the Red, White, and Blue and helped winni the country’s first men’s Olympic ice hockey gold medal since the Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid in 1980 with a 2-1 overtime win against Canada in the final.
Tkachuk and the Americans would draw criticism for a video of their phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump taken in the locker room immediately after the win. The team would later appear at the White House to attend the State of the Union, with gold-medal game hero Connor Hellebuyck being honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Tkachuk and Sanderson returned to the Senators after their triumph with Team USA for the season restart on Feb. 26.
The two were both cheered on by the Senators fans in attendance, but there was still an measure of tension in the air after the White House released an AI video to their TikTok account depicting Tkachuk insulting Canadians with fabricated audio.
He would publicly decry the “clearly fake” video after the team’s morning skate, stating that “those words would never come out of my mouth.”
The Senators would go onto lose in overtime in their first game out of the break despite Tkachuk scoring his 15th goal of the season, with Ottawa sitting seven points out of the final wild card spot in the East.
Second Playoff Run
From that point and on, the race for the wild card was officially underway with 24 games remaining in Ottawa’s regular season.
But while the Senators looked to make their push down the stretch, Tkachuk found himself in hot water once again thanks to comments his father, Keith Tkachuk, made on the Wingmen podcast.
Keith, now a Hockey Hall of Famer after his 2026 induction, criticized players in the modern NHL who missed games for minor injuries or rest, and specifically called out the Senators for a perceived lack of toughness.
“You play through injuries,” he said. “Holy Christ, [Brady’s] whole team, ‘Ah, my pinky hurts, I’m out for six-to-eight [weeks].’
“‘I just had a bad sleep, so I can’t play today,’”, he continued. “Oh my god, disgusting.”
The comments came just months after Senators starting goalie Linus Ullmark stepped away from the team and entered the NHL Player Assistance Program to tend to his mental health after he experienced panic attacks during a game earlier in the season.
Despite the off-ice drama, Ottawa would play to a 15-5-4 record after the Olympics and claimed the second wild card to set up a first-round series against the Carolina Hurricanes.
The series began with Tkachuk and Hurricanes forward Jordan Staal dropping the gloves in a battle of the captains on the opening face off in Game 1, and things would skew heavily in the Hurricanes’ favour from that point on.
Ottawa would be handily swept out of the first round by Carolina, with Tkachuk failing to record a point and finishing with a minus-four rating in a disappointing effort all around from the Senators.
While the Senators held their end-of-season media availabilities during locker room cleanup day, Tkachuk was away from the team while his wife gave birth to their second child.
In his absence, Staios addressed the rumours of his captain wanting out, going as far as to call the chatter “nonsense”.
“I don’t read it. I don’t bother with it,” the general manager said. “We know what we have internally. We have great communication with our players, so we really don’t focus on it.
“I mean, this comes up very often. There’s nothing that we have talked about or thought about where that conversation should happen.”
When Tkachuk returned to Ottawa to meet the media days later, he echoed much of Staios’ comments when asked about the speculation of his future with the organization.
“I feel like I’ve answered this hundreds of times,” he said. ”None of that, I feel like I’ve never shown, I’ve never said, none of those things ever came out of my mouth. And quite honestly, it’s just getting frustrating.
“It’s becoming a distraction, because I have been fully committed to this team, to the city, and it’s just becoming a distraction and frustrating to deal with.”
Exit From Ottawa
Just two months later, Tkachuk was on his way to Florida.
TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun reported that Tkachuk submitted a list of four teams - the Panthers, Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild, and Vegas Golden Knights – to Staios after he informed him he would not be re-signing with the team in two years’ time.
LeBrun also added that he did not promise to waive his no-move clause to join any team other than Florida to play with his brother.
Staios’ hands were tied, and he ultimately pulled the trigger on the deal to officially end Tkachuk’s time in Ottawa.
“It was clearly pointed at one team at the end,” Staios said one day after the trade was announced. “I feel comfortable with the return given the circumstances.”
No player had more goals (213), points (463), power-play goals (62), shots (2,202), hits (1,921), winning goals (28), multi-goal games (30) and penalty minutes (821) than Tkachuk did during his tenure with the club.
In a conversation with LeBrun in The Athletic ahead of the new season, Senators owner Michael Andlauer acknowledged that the franchise essentially did not have a choice in trading their captain.
“Blood is thicker than water, and let’s just say that his father and his brother got in his kitchen,” Andlauer said. “Ultimately, the decision was made to go and play with his brother. It’s a decision that was out of our control to a certain degree. But you have to want to play for Ottawa. And right to the end, our fans were behind Brady — even after Team USA won gold. I have no doubt in my mind.”
In the weeks immediately after the trade, the Senators put on a ‘Chuk Out the Old Jersey’ promotion which let fans trade in their officially licensed Tkachuk jerseys in exchange for a 40 per cent discount on other team merchandise.
The Ottawa Titans, a professional baseball team playing in the Frontier League, also got in on the action, hosting a “Forget Brady” Day on July 7, where fans could also trade in their sweaters.
While still in the early days of their post-Tkachuk era, the Senators appear to have not skipped a beat without their former captain.
Now with defenceman Thomas Chabot donning the ‘C’, Ottawa has opened the season at 6-3-0 and appear to be among the many teams in the Atlantic Division that has their eyes set on a playoff spot.
With Tkachuk and the Panthers coming to town, he is expected to be met with an emotionally-charged and hostile reception on Wednesday night.
In the latest episode of his podcast, Tkachuk spoke of his plans to donate any Senators jerseys thrown onto the ice on Wednesday night to the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa.
Whether or not that buys him any goodwill with the fans remains to be seen.