Booed Every Shift: Tkachuk Scores in Ottawa Return, but Senators Have the Last Laugh in 5-1 Rout

The reception was set long before the puck dropped. "Brady Sucks" chants echoed through Canadian Tire Centre before faceoff, jerseys bearing his name rained onto the ice, and when the Ottawa Senators rolled a video tribute to their former captain, the building booed that too.

Brady Tkachuk had his answer ready. Midway through the first period of his first game back in Ottawa since the June blockbuster that sent him to Florida, the Panthers star buried a power-play goal on a feed from his brother Matthew to open the scoring. It was the one moment of the night that belonged to him. Everything after it belonged to the Senators, who scored five unanswered goals in a 5-1 rout of the Florida Panthers on Wednesday night.

The numbers alone tell a strange story: Ottawa (7-3-0) won its fifth game in its past seven and snapped Florida's three-game winning streak, dropping the Panthers to 5-3-2. But the scoreboard was only half the drama in a game that played out exactly the way an emotional, hostile homecoming should.

Tkachuk spent eight seasons in Ottawa, five of them as captain after being drafted fourth overall in 2018. The June 21 trade that sent him south to join his older brother in Florida was one of the biggest moves of the offseason, and the wound in Ottawa had barely begun to heal. Senators defenseman Artem Zub set the tone on the opening shift, taking Tkachuk down to a thunderous ovation, and the jeering never really stopped — fans cycled through chants of "We don't need you!" and worse, and personalized placards and signs mocked the departed captain throughout the evening.

Yet the man himself seemed to revel in the villain role. Before the game, Tkachuk had even proposed that the jerseys fans inevitably threw on the ice be donated to the Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa, a bit of showmanship that only sharpened the evening's edge.

On the ice, the Senators answered Tkachuk's opener within minutes. With Ottawa on the power play, Tim Stutzle wired a one-timer off a pass from Jake Sanderson at 14:13 of the first to tie it 1-1. It was the start of a long night for Florida goaltender Akira Schmid, who finished with 25 saves but watched the game tilt decisively in the second period.

Claude Giroux put Ottawa ahead at 9:34 of the second, taking a back pass near the left point, skating above the hash marks and firing a wrist shot through traffic with Dylan Cozens screening in front. Shane Pinto doubled the lead late in the frame at 17:18, taking a feed from Sanderson, holding off Niko Mikkola on the rush and sliding the puck under a sprawled Schmid for a 3-1 lead.

The third period brought the boilover everyone had been anticipating. Emotions spilled over in front of Ottawa's bench as Brady Tkachuk, Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett tangled with Senators players, with Brady and Cozens exchanging heated words. Earlier in the period, Bennett dropped the gloves with Ridly Greig. But it was Ottawa that landed the blows that mattered: Warren Foegele finished off a feed from Cozens at the eight-minute mark for a 4-1 lead, and Stephen Halliday buried a Stutzle drop pass to make it 5-1. Stutzle and Halliday each finished with a goal and an assist, and Sanderson's two helpers continued a quietly excellent start to his season.

The win came at a cost, however. Early in the third period, Ottawa starter Linus Ullmark made a pad save — ironically, on a Brady Tkachuk shot — and stayed down. The veteran goaltender, who had entered the night white-hot with six wins in seven starts and a .945 save percentage, was helped off the ice by the team's medical staff with what Reuters reported as a lower-body injury. Ullmark finished with 16 saves, and backup Samuel Ersson stopped the only shot he faced the rest of the way.

The severity of Ullmark's injury is the story to watch now. Ottawa hosts the San Jose Sharks on Thursday, and a prolonged absence for the 33-year-old — whose Vezina-caliber 2022-23 campaign in Boston still stands as one of the modern era's great goaltending seasons — would be a genuine blow to a Senators team that is building something real. Florida, meanwhile, heads to Pittsburgh on Thursday looking to steady itself after a night when its marquee storyline became a sideshow.

For one night, Ottawa got to have it both ways: it honored its former captain, booed him mercilessly, and buried his team. Tkachuk got his goal. The Senators got the game, the night and, barring the Ullmark injury cloud, all the momentum.