Goaltender Linus Ullmark (35) and defenceman Jake Sanderson celebrate a win over the Tampa Bay Lightning on April 7 that helped cement the Senators' playoff spot.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Who will play the Hamburglar?
This Saturday afternoon, the Ottawa Senators will meet the Carolina Hurricanes in the opening round of the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Senators grabbed a wild-card placement in the post-season thanks to a remarkable rise through the standings that began in January.
From dead last in the Atlantic Division through the first 52 games – a rocky time remembered for faulty goaltending, suspect defence and social-media controversy – the Senators went a remarkable 20-6-4 to finish with 99 points. In doing so, they denied their usual Eastern Conference playoff nemesis, the Toronto Maple Leafs, sending the Leafs to early golf tee times with a 3-1 trouncing on Wednesday.
Ottawa thereby finished the regular season with a top-10 record for the first time since 2006-07, the year they went to the Cup final but lost to the Anaheim Ducks.
A series-by-series Stanley Cup playoff preview
While the Senators did reach the playoffs last season – only to lose in the first round to … ummm … the Maple Leafs – the excitement this spring is comparable more to 2015, when an unknown 27-year-old minor-league goaltender named Andrew Hammond turned ‘The City that Fun Forgot’ into ‘The City that Fun Finally Found.’
Hammond, known as the ‘Hamburglar’ from his college days for his ability to steal games from supposedly superior opponents, became the NHL’s Cinderella story.
He had been cut from his junior team and was not drafted into the NHL, but he never gave up on his dream to play professionally. The native of White Rock, B.C., was called up from the minors when the team’s two goalies fell to injuries. He then carried the Senators to a 20-1-2 streak that took them, to much local shock and delight, into the playoffs.
By winning his first dozen NHL games, Hammond matched a 77-year-old record set by Boston Bruins Hall of Famer Frank ‘Mr. Zero’ Brimsek. The city widely embraced his college nickname, which had been adopted from a burger-stealing cartoon character in McDonald’s commercials.
Whenever ‘Hamburglar’ Hammond won at home, fans would litter the ice with Big Macs and Quarter Pounders – with at least one player caught on camera snacking on one of the missiles.
On this day in 2015, Curtis Lazar made sure not to waste the hamburger that was thrown onto the ice in honour of Andrew Hammond, aka the Hamburglar 🍔 #Hockey365 #GoSensGo pic.twitter.com/wvnEm1i2nO
— Mike Commito (@mikecommito) March 19, 2026
The 2015 Senators became a local sensation, complete with downtown’s Elgin Street being renamed ‘Sens Mile’ to accommodate the celebrations. The party ended only when the Sens finally fell in a tough opening round to the Montreal Canadiens.
The ‘Hamburglar’ legacy was born, however, even though Hammond soon moved on to other teams and eventually retired. Ottawa has already announced the re-opening of the Sens Mile, and the new party is about to begin.
The 2026 Senators may not have the novelty of the 2015 version, but there are players with character if not players likened to characters.
In Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot, Ottawa boasts two of the better defencemen in the league. Other defenders, including the unheralded Artem Zub, have been pleasant surprises.
The line of Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson and 38-year-old Claude Giroux is considered one of the league’s most effective lines. Captain Brady Tkachuk, centre Dylan Cozens and winger Ridly Greig make up an effective attack line but also a unit to be feared. Tkachuk is notoriously fierce around the net, while Cozens was one of the NHL’s top hitters, laying 215.
Goaltending, of course, is a major question for every team, every playoffs. As former Philadelphia Flyers coach Terry Murray once put it, “As far as you go, they’re the ones taking you.”
The Senators struggled mightily in goal this year, with the team using five different goaltenders including starter Linus Ullmark. Ullmark’s inconsistency and personal problems – a leave of absence became a brief social-media firestorm – were widely considered the team’s Achilles’ heel until the January swing in fortunes. The team brought in 38-year-old James Reimer as backup and both Reimer and Ullmark were stellar over the final weeks of the season.
Head coach Travis Green knows what his players are up against. The secret to success, he told them this week, is to “work your balls off.”
The Senators play stifling defence under head coach Travis Green. They allowed an average of 24.4 shots on net, one of the NHL's lowest totals.Gene J. Puskar/The Associated Press
Carolina head coach Rod Brind’Amour predicts the first round will be “a tough matchup.”
He thinks the revived Senators have “become one of the better teams” after such “a tough start to their season.”
“It’s going to be a huge challenge,” says Brind’Amour. Green obviously agrees from his view from the Ottawa bench. The Hurricanes went 53-22-7 to earn 113 points and first place in the Metropolitan Division and Eastern Conference.
“I firmly believe that this team has a chance,” Green told Sportsnet’s Alex Adams this week. “I never got to do it as a player … I want to win a Cup as a coach.”
Green previously coached the Vancouver Canucks from 2017 to 2021. He had limited success there and when Senators general manager Steve Staios chose Green over Craig Berube in 2024, the reception in the nation’s capital was lukewarm at best. Berube, after all, had won a Cup coaching the St. Louis Blues. Today, Berube is said to be on the ropes as coach of the fallen Leafs, while Green, for the moment, walks on frozen water in Ottawa.
Green, who considers himself a bit of a hockey nerd, decided that his team had to succeed defensively before it could ever count on pure offence.
“It’s not fancy,” Sanderson told Sportsnet. “Ever since Travis came, he just taught us the right way how to play hockey the winning way.”
They won alright, and surprised the hockey world by reaching the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs.
Now, if Green could just find a 2026 version of the Hamburglar…