Brady Tkachuk Scores on a First-Period Power Play in His First Game Back in Ottawa

Update, October 21: Senators coach Travis Green said after the game that Linus Ullmark left with a lower-body strain and will be evaluated on Thursday. Sportsnet also reports that fans threw Tkachuk jerseys onto the ice during the stoppage for Ullmark’s injury. The Ullmark section and the jersey FAQ on this page carry both updates.

Update, October 22: Ottawa placed Ullmark on injured reserve on Thursday, ruling him out for at least a week, and recalled Jonas Johansson from AHL Belleville. The Ullmark section below carries the Thursday outcome.

Update, October 23: Travis Green said Ullmark will miss one to two weeks, and Samuel Ersson started Thursday’s 6-2 loss to San Jose. The Ullmark section below carries both.

Brady Tkachuk’s first game in Ottawa as a visitor went the way everyone in the building expected, and then it went Ottawa’s way. The former captain was booed in warmups, booed on his puck touches and booed through the video tribute the Senators played for him, and he still opened the scoring on a first-period power play. The Senators answered with five straight goals, Stutzle’s equalizer in the first period and two in each period after, to win 5-1 on a night that also took their starting goalie out of the game.

How was Tkachuk received in Ottawa?

Badly, from the first minute, and at a volume the coverage kept remarking on. TSN reports the boos started in warmups and followed every touch, and that fans cheered loudest early when Artem Zub put Tkachuk on the ice with a first-shift check. The Senators played a tribute video at the first television timeout; Sportsnet and The Canadian Press report the crowd drowned it out with profane chants while Tkachuk raised his stick, waved and grinned. The chants collected by reporters on the night included “Brady sucks”, “We don’t need you”, “Matthew’s better” and “You betrayed us”. Two season-ticket holders, Neil Kennelly and his son Nolan, wore Tkachuk jerseys with an X taped over the captain’s C, Nolan’s carrying the words “Wingmen is trash”, a reference to the podcast criticism that strained relations last season.

What did he do in the game?

He scored its first goal, on Florida’s first shot of the night. Zub’s tripping penalty put Florida on the power play midway through the first period, Matthew Tkachuk found his brother in front of the net, and Brady chipped it past Linus Ullmark, in TSN’s account. On the next faceoff, Ottawa’s Hayden Hodgson fought Florida’s Bokondji Imama, and Tkachuk later drew a scrum and two minutes in the box after exchanging words and shoves with Shane Pinto behind the goal. Stutzle tied the game before the intermission, and the rest of the night belonged to the home team: two Ottawa goals in the second period, two more in the third, the last a shorthanded goal by Stephen Halliday off a Stutzle assist. Tkachuk finished with the one goal. The goal also extended the run that had changed his Florida season: no points in his first five games, then 10 points in four, including the consecutive natural hat tricks covered in our report on Florida’s three straight natural hat tricks.

What happened to Linus Ullmark?

The night’s second story arrived with 16:25 left in the third period and Ottawa leading 3-1. TSN reports Ullmark extended his right pad to deflect a puck sliding toward the net, slumped over, was tended to by the training staff and was helped off the ice with an apparent lower-body injury. Samuel Ersson finished the game in relief. Ullmark had allowed one goal, Tkachuk’s, and came into the night with a 1.33 goals-against average and a .945 save percentage in seven starts, the strongest goaltending numbers in the league’s young season. Ottawa had already spent this month managing its blue line, as our report on Thomas Chabot’s injury and Jake Sanderson’s return covers, and it now waits on the one player it can least spare.

After the game, coach Travis Green put the first name on it: a lower-body strain, with Ullmark to be evaluated on Thursday, TSN reports via Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch, and theScore reports the same comment via NHL.com’s Andrew Wilimek. Green could not confirm the severity. Sportsnet adds two details that change how the night reads. This was the second time this month Ullmark could not finish a start, after he left early against Boston on October 5 with what Green called a tweak, and the stoppage for his injury on Wednesday was also the moment the crowd’s other protest landed: fans threw Tkachuk jerseys onto the ice while a scrum broke out in front of the Ottawa bench. Tkachuk had pledged before the game that thrown jerseys would be donated to the Ottawa Boys and Girls Club. Whether the jerseys thrown on Wednesday were collected for that donation has not been reported yet. Ottawa plays San Jose at home on Thursday, the second night of a back-to-back, and theScore reports veteran Jonas Johansson is the likely recall if Ullmark misses time.

Thursday settled the first part of that. Ottawa placed Ullmark on injured reserve before the San Jose game, TSN reports, a designation that means he will miss at least a week, and recalled Johansson from Belleville, where the veteran is 3-1-1 with a 2.92 goals-against average and a .912 save percentage in five AHL games. NHL.com’s Senators preview carries the same club-side facts: injured reserve on Thursday, a week or more out, Johansson recalled. Ullmark’s line at the moment he left Wednesday’s game was 17 saves on 18 shots, and his season numbers, 7-1-0 with a 1.33 goals-against average and a .945 save percentage, are second in the league, per TSN. Reuters’ Field Level Media report confirms Ersson takes over as Ottawa’s primary goaltender, with the backup’s line sitting at 0-2 with a .831 save percentage and a 4.70 goals-against average in four games.

Thursday also brought the first word on a real timeline. Coach Travis Green said Ullmark will miss one to two weeks with the lower-body strain, Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun reports via Pro Hockey Rumors, which narrows the at-least-a-week IR window and sets the hoped-for return at early November. The Hockey News also reports Ullmark is expected to miss at least two weeks.

The first game without him went the way Ottawa feared. Samuel Ersson made the start against San Jose on Thursday night, and the Senators lost 6-2 at Canadian Tire Centre, The Hockey News and Sportradar’s match record confirm. Ottawa scored first through Tim Stutzle and got another from Jordan Spence, but San Jose scored three unanswered goals in a disastrous four-minute second-period stretch, including two against Ottawa’s own power play, and two late empty-netters padded the final, The Hockey News reports. Ersson stopped 22 of 26 shots he faced. The Senators host the New York Rangers on Saturday, and the question is no longer when Ersson starts but how many of Ullmark’s starts he can hold.

Why did Tkachuk leave Ottawa, in the end?

The short version is on the record. Tkachuk, drafted fourth overall in 2018, told the club he would not re-sign when his seven-year contract, signed in October 2021 and running through 2027-28, came due. On June 21, Ottawa traded him to Florida, where his brother Matthew plays, for three first-round picks and a 2027 second-round pick, per NHL.com. Owner Michael Andlauer suggested his father Keith and brother Matthew influenced the request; Tkachuk said the decision was 100 per cent his, and that the reasons would stay private between him and Staios. His Ottawa totals were 473 points in 581 games, with playoff appearances in 2025 and 2026 after seven years of missing.

What did he and his coach say before the game?

Tkachuk called the night a once-in-a-lifetime moment, a chance to say goodbye to the city where he spent eight seasons, and said his hoped-for legacy was blood, sweat and tears. Panthers coach Paul Maurice, asked how fans should receive him, told them to come however they feel: NHL.com quotes him answering “Bring the passion” and saying that is what pro sports is about. Tkachuk had dinner with former teammates on Tuesday, though he noted, when the subject of Stutzle came up, that he had not seen him: “I have a chef at home, so I didn’t go for dinner.”

What happens next for these two teams?

Ottawa took both points and the louder story, and lost its goalie doing it, and Ullmark’s Thursday outcome is now known in its fuller form: injured reserve, a one-to-two-week timeline from Green, Johansson recalled, and Ersson’s first start ending in a 6-2 home loss to San Jose. The next question that matters is whether Ullmark returns by early November, and how many starts Ersson can steady before then. Florida leaves with the reception it expected and a quiet night from the player who had been its hottest scorer, in a league week where Cole Caufield’s own hard night in Montreal and Nikita Kucherov tying Tampa Bay’s points record made the same point from different directions: October storylines are written by single nights, and this one belonged to the crowd as much as to either team.

October 23 update: The league has now priced Wednesday’s chaos. The NHL Department of Player Safety fined Matthew Tkachuk $5,000 for roughing Dylan Cozens in the third-period scrum and Nick Cousins $4,091.49 for unsportsmanlike conduct from the bench, both the maximum the CBA allows, while fans fumed that no discipline was announced for the Greig elbow. The full fine breakdown and the fan reaction are in this site’s report on the maximum fines.

October 24 update: The return night’s argument moved to the podcast studio, where Keith Yandle called the Senators fans disgusting for booing Tkachuk’s tribute, Paul Bissonnette told him to shut up, and Tim Stutzle’s chef joke about skipping dinner took on a life of its own.