the Senators sent him to Florida for three first-round draft picks and a second-rounder<\/a>. The move not only reunited him with his brother Matthew, but it also landed him with an Atlantic Division rival that is one year removed from back-to-back Stanley Cups.<\/p>\nThe Senators effectively decided to rip the Band-Aid off immediately by moving Tkachuk this summer rather than waiting to act until closer to his pending unrestricted free agency in 2028.<\/p>\n
He was previously part of a young nucleus of players that was starting to bear fruit in Ottawa. The Senators drafted Tkachuk with the fourth pick in 2018, before taking St\u00fctzle and Jake Sanderson with the third and fifth picks in the 2020 draft. The team qualified for the playoffs in consecutive seasons before Tkachuk made it known to management he wanted out.<\/p>\n
While the former captain\u2019s decision was a bitter pill for Senators fans to swallow, St\u00fctzle didn\u2019t take it personally.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I\u2019m not the GM or anything, I wasn\u2019t in the meetings, I don\u2019t know what happened, so I can\u2019t really speak too much about it,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was a friend of mine. He still is. Obviously, if you lose a guy you played with for five years, it\u2019s always kind of a change of scenery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish him all the best, but I\u2019m also happy that we have a lot of guys who want to be in Ottawa. And if that\u2019s his decision, that\u2019s his decision, I\u2019m going to respect that obviously and we\u2019re going to move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
St\u00fctzle has finished as Ottawa\u2019s leading scorer in three of the last four seasons, and with Tkachuk gone, he is poised to become an even more central character to the franchise. The 24-year-old is under contract to the Senators for another five years and expressed confidence that the growth of the remaining players, coupled with a trade for 23-year-old forward William Eklund from San Jose with some of the assets Ottawa got back for Tkachuk, will allow the group to withstand the change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve got some really good players,\u201d St\u00fctzle said. \u201c(We made) some really good additions, and also the leadership we have, obviously, besides our captain leaving. I think the leadership we had in the room before and the support group of Brady, I think, was really strong and still is really strong.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not concerned about that at all. I think we have a bunch of great leaders. No matter if someone\u2019s wearing a letter or not, we\u2019re a bunch of great guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
Furthermore, St\u00fctzle said, if needed, he\u2019s confident he can step into even more of a leadership role.<\/p>\n
He also believes the Senators are positioned to build on hard-won lessons from last season. The Senators were one of the NHL\u2019s top teams in shot share, but needed to rally in the second half just to qualify for the playoffs \u2014 where they were swept by the eventual champion Carolina Hurricanes in a series that was much closer on the ice than it will look when recorded in the history books.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a tight-fought series,\u201d St\u00fctzle said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it was a 4-0 series. I still think they were the better team, and they deserved to win that series, but could we have won one or two games? Yeah probably. But we said that the year before (in Round 1 against the Toronto Maple Leafs), too, and at some point we\u2019ve just got to have the results. We need the results.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to do everything we can for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
With two months to digest the Tkachuk news, St\u00fctzle sounded upbeat about the 2026-27 campaign heading into training camp. Looking down the roster, he sees a collection of players ready to pull in the same direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have a really fun group,\u201d St\u00fctzle said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s really dialed and wants to get better every day. As long as you all go for the same goal, I think at some point you\u2019re going to achieve it. I think also we have a lot of guys who want to be in Ottawa, so that\u2019s what makes me excited.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MUNICH \u2014 While acknowledging the Ottawa Senators will miss Brady Tkachuk following the former captain\u2019s ground-shaking request to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1015660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[42],"tags":[293,3105,62,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1015659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-ottawa-senators","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117135508073306066","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1015660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}