Ottawa Senators' captain Brady Tkachuk, right, wanted to set the tone for the series when he fought Carolina Hurricanes' captain Jordan Staal in the opening seconds of Game 1.Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
“Ignore the noise!”
This, according to captain Brady Tkachuk, has been the mantra of the Ottawa Senators’ dressing room for much of the 2025-2026 NHL season.
It worked as his team stumbled and bumbled through the first half and more of the season thanks to weak goaltending and key injuries. Ignoring the naysayers, the Senators regrouped in late January and, almost miraculously, rose to grab a wild card position in the postseason.
This weekend, however, the noise came roaring back as the Senators fell 2-0 in Raleigh to the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
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“Uninspired and lacklustre,” one local judged on X.
“Senators were absolute trash,” added another.
“NHL wants Carolina to win to eliminate a Canadian team,” moaned a third after what was first seen as an Ottawa goal was disallowed. “They always have.”
It was not as bad as some would have it. The Senators established their feistiness right off the drop of the puck when, three seconds in, Tkachuk dropped the gloves with Hurricanes’ captain Jordan Staal.
“I just wanted to show it’s going to be a long series,” said Tkachuk.
Linus Ullmark (35) allowed a pair of goals in the Game 1 loss but played an excellent game. If he stays at that level, Roy MacGregor writes, the Senators will have a chance to get back into their series with the favoured Hurricanes.James Guillory/Reuters
That, of course, is now almost instantly the question. Can the Ottawa Senators bounce back in Monday’s Game 2 and return home with a split in the series – or are they doomed already, up against the top team in the NHL’s Eastern Conference?
Some would say yes, they are in trouble. The Hurricanes’ chances of winning the Cup following Game 1, according to hockeystats.com, stood at 15 per cent, while the Senators’ chances fell to 4 per cent.
Opening games are not easily dismissed. Teams that open a series with a victory have an all-time series record of 535-252, a win percentage of .680.
One weak game on the road and the noise back home starts to rattle.
Road games, loyal Senators’ fans know only too well, have long been an issue with the Ottawa team.
Back in 2007, when a fabulous Senators’ team – Daniel Alfredsson, Jason Spezza, Dany Heatley – went to the Stanley Cup final against the Anaheim Ducks, they fell, finally, on the road.
It happened again to a terrific 2017 team – Erik Karlsson, Mark Stone, Craig Anderson – when Ottawa met Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern Conference final.
Road games were an issue from the very beginning of the reborn Senators. They launched their inaugural 1992-93 season at home, stunning the Montreal Canadiens 5-3. The noise that day was joyous. “Maybe Rome was built in a day,” read the next day’s headline in the Ottawa Citizen.
The brand-new team set out on the road and, well, Rome quickly collapsed. The Senators travelled to Quebec City, where they met the Nordiques and lost 9-2. Off they went next to Boston, where the team bus got lost in the fog.
Logan Stankoven, right, of the Carolina Hurricanes scored what turned out to be the game-winner in his team's 2-0 win over the Ottawa Senators.Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
That Ottawa team would go on to set a record for futility. They would lose 70 games, win only 10 and tie 4. They lost 38 in a row over one long stretch. They were often referred to as “roadkill” by disdaining opponents and unforgiving media.
The Senators would not win on the road until the very last game of the season, on Long Island to play the New York Islanders. Team captain Laurie Boschman, who came into the game with only five goals for the season, scored a hat trick to lead his team to, finally, a road victory.
No wonder his teammates gathered outside the bus when Boschman came to board and bowed in an exaggerated “We are not worthy” fashion.
Losing 2-0 on Saturday to the Carolina Hurricanes is hardly a call for despair and the immediate shutting down of the “Sens Mile” along Ottawa’s Elgin Street that was created to celebrate the team reaching the playoffs.
“They didn’t finish first for nothing,” Senators’ head coach Travis Green said of the Hurricanes after the Game 1 loss. “I didn’t mind our game. A couple of goals that went in were – I don’t want to say ‘lucky’ but … the first one I think is a fanned shot, the second one they get a bounce.”
As for bounces, many will feel the Senators received a bad one when what appeared to be a tying goal by forward Drake Batherson was disallowed.
Hurricanes’ goaltender Frederick Andersen caught Batherson’s deflection, but players and on-ice officials all believed the gloved puck had crossed the goal line. A subsequent review by Toronto’s NHL Situation Room overruled the call on the ice, saying video review indicated the puck “did not completely cross the Carolina goal line.”
As for Ottawa goaltender Linus Ullmark, who flailed badly in the first half of the season, he was as solid in this loss as he had been in the many victories that surprisingly propelled his team into the postseason.
Ullmark was particularly sharp as he was key to Ottawa killing off two separate 5-on-3 advantages by the high-scoring Hurricanes.
On neither Carolina goal could Ullmark be faulted. A Senators’ defensive error led to a quick shot by Logan Stankoven that slipped under Ullmark’s left pad. Another defensive error led to a goalmouth scramble where Carolina’s Taylor Hall was able to score on a rebound.
It is Ullmark’s play while his team was two men down that Ottawa fans should celebrate in this opening loss. Such a feat is simply remarkable by any measure in a game where a one-man advantage is considered vast.
Should Ullmark continue such fine play into Game 2 – still on the road – and should his teammates return to the fine attack-and-defend play that turned the 2026 portion of the 2025-2026 season around, the Sens Mile on Elgin Street may well explode.
As the captain might say, “Embrace the noise!”