Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk told off Ottawa fans for booing his team off home ice on Nov. 4 after they lost in embarrassing fashion to the Tampa Bay Lighting, 6-4. Dismissing the boos as “bulls**t”, as he did in a postgame interview, doesn’t make him the first player to lash out at fans when they complain about seeing a crummy product on the ice. Yet that doesn’t mean he’s right or that he should have taken Ottawa fans to task for expressing their unhappiness with his team’s disappointing performance so far this season.
Hockey fans booing their team is probably as old as the NHL itself and lately, at least in Canada, it seems to be happening more frequently. So, who’s in the right? Players like Tkachuk who complain about it, or their fans who do it?
Ottawa Fans Have Every Right to Boo the Senators
Bytown hockey fans have every right to boo the Senators. Once again their team is a bottom dweller with a 4-6-0 record and a .400 points percentage (PTS%). And it’s not even mid-November yet. Unless they start playing north of a .600 PTS%, they have no chance of making the postseason – not even through a wild card spot.
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It takes a lot of cheek for Tkachuk to so arrogantly dismiss complaints from fans about the awful product the Senators have put on the ice this season. He may not realize it, but to see his team play, many fans are shelling out hundreds of dollars of their hard-earned money for tickets and buying outrageously priced food and drink. Not only that, but many fork over even more money to purchase team gear. To top it all off, most battle traffic to get to Canadian Tire Centre (CTC) and then wait for up to an hour to exit the parking lot to begin their long trek home.
Put simply, fans of the Senators deserve better from their team than they’ve been getting.
The Right Response From Tkachuk When Ottawa Fans Boo
Every NHL team in Canada has been booed for poor performance at some point in the last year. Yet the players on those teams have reacted much differently than Tkachuk.
For example, the Calgary Flames were booed off the ice after dropping a match to the St. Louis Blues in late October. Yet Flames defenceman Nikita Zadorov stepped up to the mic after the game and said, “I just want to apologize to our fans, we’re playing like [expletive] right now.”
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In Edmonton, the Oilers were booed repeatedly throughout a late October game against the New York Rangers that they lost 3-0. After the game, Oilers blueliner Darnell Nurse‘s reaction was simple, “everyone’s got to look in the mirror and be a whole lot [expletive] better.”
In Montreal, perhaps the city whose fans are the toughest on their team, Habs captain Nick Suzuki reacting to his team being booed after losing a game in 2021 to the Colorado Avalanche said, “It’s tough to get booed, but the fans want to see wins. They’re used to productive teams and we’re not doing that now. I can definitely see why they’re getting angry” (from Pat Hickey, “In the Habs Room: It’s tough to get booed, Nick Suzuki admits”, Montreal Gazette, 3/12/21).
If Tkachuk doesn’t have it in him to apologize to Ottawa fans for his team’s dreadful play this season, then at the very least, he could have taken a page from Mitch Marner who overlooked the boos his team got on Halloween night after they mailed in a stinker losing to the Los Angeles Kings 4-1. Rather than upbraiding fans for their lack of support, Marner overlooked the boos, saying simply, “It is important that the Leafs don’t get focused on what’s going on around them and stay on the task at hand.”
The point of all of this is that over the years every Canadian team has been booed for falling short of the expectations of their fans. Yet the leaders of those teams – the players the local community worships, haven’t lashed out at their fan base the way Tkachuk did.
Tkachuk’s Esposito Moment
It would be easy to chalk up Tkachuk’s remarks after his team’s loss to the Bolts as just a bad-tempered rant. Yet perhaps there was a method to his madness. As D.J. Smith explained in a presser on Nov. 6, his captain “was probably just frustrated and sticking up for his teammates as a leader does. He’s as good a leader as I’ve coached. He’s as good a leader on and off the ice as I’ve seen.”
Tkachuk is every inch an NHL captain and in the face of adversity knows how to rally his team around the flag. Phil Esposito did exactly that after Team Canada fell behind the Soviet Union in the 1972 Summit Series after losing Game 4 in Vancouver to notch a disappointing 1-2-1 record on Canadian soil. He blasted Canadian fans for booing their team and that seemed to fire up his teammates. They went on to take three of the remaining four games in Moscow to deliver victory for Canada.
Esposito’s remarks came from the heart and will remain in Canadian hockey folklore as one of the most powerful hockey speeches of all time. Some Ottawa hockey pundits have dubbed Tkachuk’s comments after the Tampa loss as his “Esposito moment”. Fans on the Rideau Canal can only hope their team responds the same way Team Canada did to Esposito’s famous rant back in ole ’72.
Playing Hockey in Canada is Unforgiving
Canada is a tough place to play hockey. For many fans across Canada, their team is part of their identity and nothing short of victory is acceptable. Teams that don’t deliver it, or at least demonstrate that they are on the path toward it, are loathed by Canadian fans. Eventually teams like that, along with their players, are devoured. That’s something that Tkachuk may not yet understand.
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Fans can only cheer when their team is winning and boo when they aren’t. It’s the only form of expression they have available to them. Tkachuk needs to understand and accept that. Surely he can’t expect fans to stay silent in the face of the awful hockey his team has offered up in its first ten games this season.
How the Senators Can Stop the Booing
There’s really only one way Tkachuk and his team can stop Ottawa fans from booing them. It’s to play harder, play better and start winning. It’s as simple as that.
What Tkachuk and his mates should be more concerned about is if Ottawa fans stay quiet. As one fan put it on social media, “You know what rinks never hear booing? Florida and Arizona – because empty seats can’t boo.”
I get that Tkachuk and his teammates don’t like to be booed. Nobody does. But would they rather people use their wallets to show their displeasure and not buy tickets? That’s the alternative.