A couple of kids with a “healthy enthusiasm” for hockey are wowed by the Sens experience

Wee G at a recent Ottawa Senators game

Vicky Smallman is a blogger, mom and “shameless communtiy activist.” You can find her on Twitter @offhandremarks.

Right before the holidays I was the lucky winner of a great giveaway at Local Tourist Ottawa: four tickets to see the Sens play the Florida Panthers.   I said that I wanted to bring my five-year-old son, who is known as Wee G over on my blog.  This is a kid with a… let’s call it a…. healthy enthusiasm for the game, ever since he was about 14 months old.

It was around Christmastime and we were over at my cousin’s place for a family gathering.  They had set up a great rink in their front yard for shinny, there was a rousing game of ministicks happening in the basement and the World Juniors were on TV.

OK, I guess my family kind of likes hockey.

Anyway, something clicked for G that day.  He watched the front yard shinny in awe.  He threw his little toddler self into the basement play.  And he stunned my uncles by walking into the den, pointing at the TV and yelling “Hockey!”  It was pretty much love at first sight.   For the next couple of years his favourite game was playing hockey in the kitchen, where he could see his reflection in the oven glass and practice his goalie moves.  He learned to skate only when we agreed to put a stick in his hands – it really seemed to help.   Like I said, a healthy enthusiasm.

G is an active kid with an active imagination.  So for him playing hockey means acting out what he sees on TV – right down to the details of swaying back and forth during the national anthem.

G and I have never been to a Sens game together so I was thrilled at the chance to take him.  Since our youngest is a bit too young for an evening game, I invited one of G’s buddies, four-year-old P, and his mom to join us.  It was going to be their first NHL game too.

Chris Neil #25 of the Ottawa Senators stickhandles the puck against Keaton Ellerby #4 of the Florida Panthers at Scotiabank Place on December 22, 2011. (Photo by Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

I have to say it was pretty interesting to see the game through the eyes of two kindergarteners.  I’m not sure how much they got out of the actual game (it was a good one – lots of goals, lots of suspense).  They were pretty mesmerized by the whole experience: music, crowd, food….  We got there right as the lights lowered and the players came out on to the ice.  The kids were fascinated by the light show, and in particular the opening slide show of historical images.  Said P: “It’s like a pop up book for the ice”.

It’s hard to keep G still in his seat, especially when so much is going on.  He became obsessed  with 1) getting flags to wave and 2) wanting to dance on the stairs like the guy he saw on the Jumbotron.  I gave in on the flags but put my foot down on the dancing.  Had to bribe him with Timbits to avoid a meltdown (he had already inhaled the popcorn we got at the beginning of the night).  By that time it was getting pretty late for an overstimulated five-year-old.

He did settle down and let me describe some of the play to  him at the crucial time, though – overtime, right before the Sens scored to win the game.

We drove home with the kids giddily chatting away in the back of the car.  A good night, I’d say!

Thanks Vicky, we’re glad you all enjoyed the game! And thanks to the Ottawa Senators for providing the tickets for this giveaway. 

Happy Holidays from Local Tourist Ottawa: Who wants to go to a Sens game?

senators.nhl.com

The Ottawa Senators and Local Tourist Ottawa want to send you and three others to a Sens game!

This hockey season marks a big year for the Sens.  Why? The team turns 20!

We’re thrilled because they have been generous enough to invite our Local Tourists to cheer them on.

Ottawa Senator Kaspars Daugavins skates up ice with the puck against the Florida Panthers at Scotiabank Place on October 27, 2011. (Photo by Andre Ringuette)

Date: Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Where: Scotiabank Place

Facing off: Ottawa Senators vs. Florida Panthers

Seats: Four tickets, 300-level

How do you win?

It’s easy! All we want is to hear your hockey in Ottawa story.

• Did you grow up playing hockey in the city?
• Do you remember your first ever Sens game?
• Have you always watched the Sens on the tube with someone special but never actually watched them live?

Tell us about hockey in Ottawa for you by commenting below. We’ll announce the winner on Sunday, December 18th.

**Bonus points to anyone who promises to send us pics or a guest post after the game!

Go Sens Go!

A hockey history: Sens mark 20-year anniversary this season (Plus, win tickets!)

Sens' fans cheer on their team earlier this year (Photo credit: Matt Zambonin)

This hockey season marks a big year for both our beloved Ottawa Senators and the community itself.

Did you know the team was turning 20 this season? Perhaps you’ve seen the black, red and white-striped heritage jersey around town — the one emblazoned with an unmistakable ‘O’. And Ottawa’s also hosting the 2012 All-Stars game come January — plus all the fun festivities that go along with that.

So in celebration of #Sens20, we thought we’d share with you 20 fun — and perhaps unknown — facts about our Ottawa Senators and the history of hockey in general.

1. Ottawa’s first hockey club was founded in 1884 after two locals were inspired by a game of organized hockey in Montreal. First named the Ottawa Hockey Club, this team went on to become the original Ottawa Senators.
2. The original Sens won 11 Stanley Cups before being moved to St. Louis in 1934 during the Great Depression.
3. The Senators played their first NHL game against Montreal on Dec. 19, 1917 at Dey’s Arena. (They lost.)
4. The 1926-27 Stanley Cup playoffs is largely recognized as the first Stanley Cup Championship of the modern era … And the Sens won!
5. There was a 58-year gap between the time the orignal Sens left  and when the revamped franchise returned on Oct. 8, 1992.
6. Captain Daniel Alfredsson is the Ottawa Senator who’s played the most games with the franchise, at 1,056 before the start of this season.
7. Hockey used to be played with seven players on the ice.
8. Winnipeg is touted as the birthplace of the puck drop-style ‘faceoff’.
9. The birthplace of ice hockey is still contested, though most research puts it in Windsor, N.S.
10. While 19 NHL have become either defunct or relocated, the Ottawa Senators and the Winnipeg Jets are the only teams to have come back with names in tact.
11. One of the original Ottawa Senators made up half of the first family to have a father and son both win the Stanley Cup. Jack McNell won with Ottawa in 1920 & 1921, and his son Fleming McNell won with Toronto in 1949 & 1951.
12. Ottawa’s Harry ‘Punch’ Broadbent scored at least one goal in 16 consecutive games during the 1921-22 season — an NHL record that still stands today.
13. Throughout its history, there has been two years when the Stanley Cup was not rewarded: In 1919, due to a flu epidemic and in 2005, over that season’s NHL lockout.
14. 1970 marked the first year NHL players’ names were added to the back of their jerseys. (First by the now-defunct California Seals.)
15. The youngest NHL player was 16.
16. The youngest NHL coach was 25.
17. The oldest NHL player was 52.
18. The oldest NHL coach was 64.
19. The 20th anniversary heritage jersey will be worn 12 times this season. (Well, 11 after the team donned it during Opening Night again the Colorado Avalanche.)
20. You can win 4 tickets to tomorrow night’s game against the Winnipeg Jets by commenting on this post, retweeting us on Twitter and liking our Sens’ link on Facebook. **

** For those who care about this kind of stuff, the tickets will be in the Coca-Cola Family Fun Zone, which means no alcohol.

Have an interesting memory of the Ottawa Senators you’d like to share? Enter the contest by leaving a comment below! Go, Sens, go!

Agonizing and celebrating every close call, every hit, and every goal: Jeremy Milks talks Ottawa Senators

 

Chris Neil #25 of the Ottawa Senators stands outside the dressing room. (Photo by Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

Jeremy Milks is the writer/editor of the blog Black Aces which covers the Ottawa Senators on a day to day basis. He is also the author of a book of short stories, “A Sane Man vs. The Thing From The Woods.”

It’s not the only game in town, but for many, it’s the only one that matters.

That’s life in a hockey-mad city, and the local NHL team, the Ottawa Senators, have given local fans a roller coaster ride ever since returning in 1992, marking an absence of nearly 60 years after the original franchise moved to St. Louis in 1934 to become known as the Eagles (who ceased operations shortly after).

To say the city has embraced the new Senators in their near 20 years of existence is an understatement, although the success of the team on the ice has not always been what everyone expected.

Fans from all sections of the Ottawa Valley make the pilgrimage to Kanata where an arena many thought would never be built now stands in what was once an undeveloped area of farmland. Taking a look around the area now, you can see the accelerated development that the Senators helped to bring to Kanata, thanks in part to the Senators original founders who, quite naturally, came up with the idea to bring a team to town in a dimly lit locker room after a game of shinny.

As author Roy MacGregor recounts in his book “Road Games” about the Senators eventful first year back in town, local businessmen Bruce Firestone, Randy Sexton and Cyril Leeder set out with a vision to bring the Senators back to Ottawa even though everyone who heard their idea thought they were crazy.

Resilient to the end, they overcame both perceptional and financial odds to beat out rival bids, one in particular by the city of Hamilton, to finally bring back NHL hockey to Canada’s capital city.

Spartacat, the Ottawa Senators' Official Mascot, made his first home game debut on October 8th, 1992 against the Montreal Canadiens at the Ottawa Civic Centre.

People were stunned at their success but quickly jumped on board. The Senators began play out of the comfy confines of Ottawa Civic Centre at Lansdowne Park (now the site of a major redevelopment slated to begin in the next few years) while they built their more permanent home in Kanata and suddenly the likes of Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Mario Lemieux were coming to town to play four or five times a year, being spotted dining out at Hy’s Steakhouse on Queen Street and adding a bit of star power to what many mistakenly thought was a sleepy government town.

The first season was a huge success off the ice, but an unmitigated disaster on it. A then somewhat unknown local singer Alanis Morissette sang the first national anthem at the premier game, which the Senators won against the Stanley Cup bound Montreal Canadiens, but they didn’t win many after that.

Most fans were just happy to have a team back in town and the expected losses of a young team didn’t seem to bother them so long as the entertainment was there. As expected, with the city in the middle of Montreal and Toronto on the Canadian map, both with traditional “Original Six” NHL teams,  Ottawa was filled with either Leafs or Canadiens fans for many years prior to the Senators reappearing on the scene.

Some switched their allegiances to the Senators right away, particularly the younger fans who didn’t have longstanding attachments to the other clubs, but many found old habits hard to break. To this day you still see many Canadiens and Maple Leafs sweaters in the crowd at Scotiabank Place but as the years go on (the Senators will be celebrating their 20^th anniversary next season) and the younger fans grow up and start to have kids of their own, we are starting to see that deep, ingrained fan base that is loyal to the core that other, more traditional clubs have enjoyed for generations.

In particular, the Senators run to the 2007 Stanley Cup Final seemed to convert many disbelievers who were disappointed in some of the team’s playoff failures up to that point, many of them against Toronto, their biggest rival in the league.

Although they didn’t beat Toronto on the way to the championship series (there are actually fans who would view beating the Maple Leafs in a playoff series just as satisfying as winning the Stanley Cup!), they were led by captain Daniel Alfredsson who cemented himself as a hero in this town by scoring the overtime goal against the Buffalo Sabres to send them to the final round.

Matt Carkner and Chris Phillips (Photo by Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

After that franchise defining game, Ottawa erupted like never before. Fans flocked to downtown Elgin Street, now known as “Sens Mile” since that historic run, shutting down traffic and many even marched to Parliament Hill, holding an impromptu rally on the ground usually used for political demonstrations or more serious purposes.  The original Senators had won 11 Stanley Cups between 1903 and 1927 (4 of them under the name of the Silver Seven) but most modern fans didn’t even have grandparents who remembered those games.

The final series against the Anaheim Ducks did not go in Ottawa’s favour but for many fans it was well worth the excitement and the team was expected to  challenge for the Cup for the next handful of years.

All the best laid plans went awry and the Senators began to struggle shortly after, resulting in this season’s edition where the organization has decided to rebuild with younger players, trading away local favourites like Mike Fisher and Chris Kelly for draft picks and futures.

About 400 children from 25 "priority neighbourhoods" in Ottawa were invited to Scotiabank Place for the season finale of the I Love To Skate presented by Canadian Tire Jumpstart program (Photo by Jana Chytilova/Freestyle Photography/OSHC).

But not all is gloomy. The arena is filled to capacity most nights, even though a lot of fans have to travel quite a distance from downtown or other areas to catch the games. Daniel Alfredsson remains on this team and vows to be part of the rebuild and stay in his adopted home city. He even hints that Ottawa will be his permanent home after he is retired instead of returning to his home country of Sweden as maybe he once expected.

Over the years, a lot of players have come to Ottawa from other parts of the country (and the world) and have made it their home after they have retired. This city remains a priority destination for a lot of NHL free agents who enjoy the community for its high standard of living, its green space and the rabid hockey fan base that lives and dies with the team year after year.

Going to a Senators game in Kanata is an experience not many should miss if they happen to be in town during the winter months.  Win or lose, most come away feeling they’ve experienced an event, not just a hockey game. There is a certain community spirit in the rink that perhaps gets lost in translation in other big cities and the players themselves are some of the most accessible in the NHL as far as getting out into the community to meet the fans.

Just a quick look around the arena on game nights gives you one clue to the future success of the Senators in this city – the sea of kids wearing Senators jerseys.

When they grow up into adults and remain Senators fans, the franchise will take their place among the most traditional and storied  clubs in the entire NHL.

Until then, there’s a lot of hockey to be played. And an entire city will continue to agonize and celebrate every close call, every post hit, and every goal scored.

All we can say is ‘wow’ – big thanks to Jeremy for providing this great snapshot of the Sens!