Ottawa Senators goaltender Linus Ullmark (35) won over fans, his teammates and coaches with his playoff performance.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
“ALL HEART ALL IN”
So still read the large signs in the CIBC “Red Zone” outside the Canadian Tire Centre on Sunday morning. Here was where those Ottawa Senators’ fans who couldn’t afford to be inside felt they couldn’t afford to miss.
The only partiers the day after along the vast empty parking lots, however, were a few pigeons in search of stale popcorn.
All heart all in ... all gone.
Some 18,793 believers came to the local hockey cathedral praying hard and loud for a Game 4 comeback against the Carolina Hurricanes, a necessary victory to extend the opening round of the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs. But it was not to be. The Senators’ season is officially over, swept in four games straight thanks to a 4-2 loss to Carolina.
Coming to worship, they ended up cursing.
“Brutal!” they said.
“One of the best goaltending performances in franchise history,” they said of Ottawa’s Linus Ullmark, “and they didn’t win a single game.”
Added another: “21 power plays with countless 5-on-3s and never leading a single game in the series.”
Senators captain Brady Tkachuk, reacting to his team's season ending at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes, was held scoreless in the gritty series.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Four games against the Hurricanes and the Senators’ best players astonishingly missing from the scoresheets: Captain Brady Tkachuk, star defender Thomas Chabot, veteran Claude Giroux and top forward Shane Pinto – all with zero points. As for the team’s best player, defenceman Jake Sanderson, he was missing for another reason – he was the victim of a vicious shot to the head by Carolina’s Taylor Hall in Game 3.
When the fans inside weren’t chanting “ULLY! ULLY! ULLY! in support of their brilliant goaltender, they were berating the ref from the rafters through all three periods. They also booed their beloveds periodically, shocked and disappointed in Ottawa’s inept power play, which appeared to believe a high “Hail Mary” pass toward the clock might somehow beat Carolina’s suffocating checking.
The criticism wasn’t restricted to the rink or the parking lot, the likes of former player and current commentator Paul Bissonnette posting: “Series over. Good riddance Ottawa. The worst Power Play performance in playoff history. They got out chanced in every game with the man advantage. Pathetic. Carolina never trailed for 1 second.”
It was not a very pleasant, even if sunny, Saturday afternoon in the nation’s capital.
The one undeniable positive, however, was the play of once-maligned goaltender Ullmark. Blamed for everything but U.S. tariffs before New Year’s, he was the central reason the Senators grasped a wild card invite to the playoffs.
His performance in Round 1 was astounding: a .931 save percentage in Game 1, .939 in Game 2, .926 in Game 3, .929 in Game 4.
“Sens scored five total goals and got swept,” one disheartened fan posted. “I’m not even sure how that’s possible with this level of goaltending.”
“This playoffs,” said Ottawa head coach Travis Green after the final game, “even down the stretch, [Ullmark] looked like a goalie that you envision winning a Vezina [Trophy as the league’s top goaltender], that you envision that you can win a Stanley Cup with. He was exceptional.”
He was indeed. The others, not so much. Top forward, 24-year-old Tim Stützle fell victim to a common ailment among young superstars on struggling teams – he tried to do too much, tried to spin and stickhandle his way through the barbed-wire defence of the Hurricanes and, more often than not, either lost the puck or fell trying too hard.
Tim Stützle (left) may have been guilty of trying to do too much for his team, which was hungry to find success in the playoffs after bowing out in the first round last year as well.Tim Austen/Freestyle Photo/Getty Images
To no surprise, much of the criticism fell on team captain Tkachuk, so often seen as the “heart and soul” of the franchise. His frustration was often obvious. Yet nothing the fiery forward could do paid off in either goals or inspiration.
“It’s heartbreaking,” a teary-eyed Tkachuk said after the game. “You come in, you just want to win a Stanley Cup. Everyone believed that in here.
“For it to be this tight of a series and not go our way in every game, it’s really tough.”
The Senators were also cursed by injury, particularly to the defence corps. Chabot was playing with a recently broken arm. Sanderson had recently returned from injury only to be felled by that check from Hall that earned only a two-minute penalty.
To add insult to injury, Hall, the 2018 Hart Trophy winner as the NHL’s most valuable player, scored the opening goal and set up another in the Hurricanes’ Saturday win. Two of Carolina’s goals, both scored by captain Sebastian Aho, were into the empty Ottawa net.
As for head coach Green, he was philosophical about the sweep. It marked the second year in a row that his team failed to move beyond the first round of the playoffs, having fallen a year ago to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Last spring the Senators had also been down three games to none but rallied to take the next two games before finally being eliminated in Game 6.
“We probably played a lot better than last year,” Green said post this year’s defeat. “And even though we lost four in a row, it’s a different series.
“I think we’ve taken a lot of steps this year to really having a lot of belief that we’re a lot closer than we were.”
It will most assuredly be an interesting summer for hockey talk in Ottawa.
As for the empty parking lots at the Canadian Tire Centre, soon they will again have thousands more cars than pigeons.
The Ottawa Charge of the Professional Women’s Hockey League defeated the Toronto Sceptres over the weekend and will move from their downtown rink, TD Place, to Canadian Tire Centre for the opening round of the Walter Cup playoffs, meeting the Boston Fleet.
Let the “ALL HEART ALL IN” signs stand awhile.