It's been one happy family off the ice for Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk lately.
On the ice, happiness will be determined by wins and losses.
Tkachuk and his wife, Emma, became proud parents to son Ryder on Sept. 16. Tkachuk is entering his seventh season playing in the NHL and his first as a father. With a new perspective on and off the ice, Tkachuk hopes that he can lead the Senators to the playoffs for the first time since he’s been in the NHL.
A few days before the start of the season, Tkachuk sat down in his second home, the Ottawa Senators dressing room, to speak to Sportsnet.ca about the upcoming season.
It began with baby fever, as Tkachuk glowed up when talking about his newborn son.
“I’m a little biased but he's the cutest baby in the world,” he said.
But there was another Tkachuk family celebration recently after Brady’s brother, Matthew, won the Stanley Cup with the Florida Panthers. Both Tkachuk and his new coach, Travis Green, are talking about Florida as a team they want to emulate.
“It’s the buy-in, really,” Tkachuk said. “A couple years ago, they were more of a run-and-gun offensive team and then all of a sudden it flipped and they're a super hard team to play against. I mean, last year, we played them four times. We got shutout three times, which is pretty unheard of for that to happen in a season. But it just speaks to the commitment that they have to the way they want to play, and how everybody's dialled in.”
Brady Tkachuk has the playoff itch, and he’s eager to scratch it.
As Senators fans all know, Tkachuk has been the leader of a ship that has sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Division too many times, finishing 26th in the NHL last season.
Tkachuk has examined last season’s failures, when the Senators were 27th in goals allowed. They were also horrible on special teams, with the 24th ranked power play and 29th ranked penalty kill in the NHL. They also struggled to score, a head-scratching development for a team oozing with talent, finishing 20th in goals for.
Remarkably, Tkachuk believes last season’s debacle was part of the process for the Senators to become a playoff team.
“I think looking back at last season, it was the best thing for us,” he said. “It allowed us to address the issues and allowed us to kind of regroup, decompress, and focus on what we really want to accomplish.”
The journey to rejuvenate the team started in May, when Green was hired as the new head coach. One of his first orders of business was to visit Tkachuk during the world hockey championship in Prague and set high expectations, where a hard training camp would focus on the details of both Tkachuk’s personal game and the team’s performance.
To Tkachuk, it was clear what part of his own game needed to get better.
“Conditioning,” he said. “I think that's kind of been an area that I've always needed to work on, ever since I can remember. The way I play, I get tired and break down a little more than I want to. So, I really worked on conditioning and going on the assault bike and skating, and doing a lot of the skate tests, to feel good and to be able to grind through when the brain gets tired, and just to find a way to dig in. I feel like it's been helping me so much so far.”
Once camp began in September, the focus turned to learning the pillars of winning hockey from Green.
“It’s the little details. A lot of it's similar to what we've done in the past, but just a different type of communication. I feel it's like connecting more; I feel like I've learned a lot already in these last couple weeks and I am able to think clearly,” Tkachuk said. “The emphasis has been on defence for everybody, and being hard to play against, and being smart too. I feel like it's (simplified) down to a point where you don't have to overthink anything.”
Tkachuk and the Senators have repeatedly thrown themselves out of the playoff hunt in the first 20 games of the season since he arrived in Ottawa. Last season was the first time Tkachuk’s Senators were .500 through their first 20 games, a 10-10-0 record to open the season. But even then, they followed that mediocre start by winning just one of their next eight games and were out of the playoff picture by December.
Paradoxically, they are hoping to have a better start this season by thinking about it less.
“There's two things that we've done in the past: one is we've overemphasized (the start of the season), creating more stress and pressure,” Tkachuk said. “Another is we’ve looked too far ahead and tried to plan it out. To need to win three out of five or to try to do the math. But I think this year, a big part of where we're at right now is just focusing on one day at a time, and really emphasizing winning the day.”
One contributing factor in the team’s past early season failures has been that the young stars they rely on, including Tkachuk, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson and Thomas Chabot, have been liabilities on the defensive end, with a combined plus-minus of minus-139 in their careers. The Senators have never finished better than 20th in goals allowed during Tkachuk’s tenure.
He says that has to change, echoing one of Green’s themes.
“Individually, that's the number one priority for me right now,” Tkachuk said. “I want to be a guy that's relied upon defensively. And for me, focusing on the commitment to it. I don't want to be known as a liability out there or trading chances. I want to be a good shutdown guy who can play against top guys and be hard to play against. This summer, I talked with Green about some things within my defensive side of the game that I can work on and I feel like that's just been a big part of my mindset for pre-season and training camp.”
Promising, considering Tkachuk actually did improve at the defensive end last season. For the first time in his career he finished with a positive plus-minus, barely over the break-even mark at plus-1. During this pre-season, the Senators allowed 3.14 goals a game, a significant improvement from the 3.43 goals allowed last season. It’s a small and imperfect sample size, but if Tkachuk continues to be the catalyst for the Senators defending at a higher level, it should turn into wins.
“Everybody says that the (post-season) is when the real NHL starts, and the real experiences with those lifelong memories start when it comes to playoff time,” he said. “I think we learned so much from last year, with the adversity that we faced and the adversity we put on ourselves. I think everything happens for a reason, and it's going to make ourselves that much better.”
The Senators’ core are building personal bonds, and want to share the experiences of winning together. After Ryder was born, Tkachuk texted a picture of his son to his linemate, Stutzle, calling him “Uncle Timmy.” Meanwhile, Josh Norris, who Tkachuk has known since he was 15 years old, came over to the Tkachuk house for dinner during training camp to meet the newborn.
The Senators are growing up together. They now need to translate their maturity and connection off the ice into success on the scoreboard.
“It’s shown in everybody's work ethic this summer,” Tkachuk said. “Everybody has taken a step in their individual talent and mindset. Sky’s the limit for us this year.”
Senators fans have become accustomed to hearing brave talk in October. But Tkachuk believes that a new approach and perspective will change the team's outcome this time.
If it’s broke, fix it. And that’s what Tkachuk is trying to do.
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