Ottawa Senators Have Every Reason To Be Annoyed By Brady Tkachuk Trade Rumours Out Of New York

The Ottawa Senators should be fuming.

Not only has the organization struggled to fulfill the expectations placed upon it this season, but they have also been left to deal with unnecessary and incessant off-ice rumours speculating on their captain's future.

Those rumours sparked in the summer as American broadcasters and journalists speculated on Brady Tkachuk's future. After the Senators' rebuild failed to yield unparalleled success for a seventh consecutive season, it would be fair to assume that the Senators' captain would be disappointed with the team's performance. That would be a highly normalized reaction for any competitive, high-performance athlete who desperately wants to experience a taste of the postseason, especially after watching his brother win a Stanley Cup.

The problem is when a reasonable assumption turns into unfounded speculation that the 2024-25 season may be Brady Tkachuk's breaking point, that if the team fails to make significant progress in its franchise's development, Tkachuk will tap out and request a trade.

In late November, I talked with Brady about the inevitable comparisons and parallels people tend to draw between him and his brother.

"We're two completely different people," Brady explained. "We've had two different paths to where we're at. We're on the right path for ourselves. Everything happens for a reason.

"Matthew's path happened because it was meant to be. I'm on my path right now. It is meant to be. It's a little bit of both where not many people are in my brain and know (my aspirations) and Matthew's brain as well (to understand) why they've happened."

Unfortunately, the Senators' record this season has not mirrored the team's play on the ice. They have simply left a lot of winnable games and capturable points on the board. A more competitive start to the campaign would have shelved any future speculation, but Sportnet's Elliotte Friedman linked the Senators and Rangers in trade talks in his most recent '32 Thoughts' article.

Given the speculation surrounding Jacob Trouba's future, it would have made sense for the Senators to kick tires. A concussion and a fracture in his foot have shelved Artem Zub for two extended periods. Without one of the key cogs in their top four, Travis Green has relied too heavily on Travis Hamonic to play meaningful minutes.

The results have been predictably bad.

According to Evolving-Hockey's' Wins Above Replacement' metric (WAR), Hamonic has been the third-least valuable skater in the league this season behind Bryan Rust and Robby Fabbri.

Of all the players in the league who have logged over 200 minutes of five-on-five ice time per NaturalStatTrick, only Chicago's Philipp Kurashev has a lower percentage of total goals (14.29 GF%) than the Ottawa defender (17.65 GF%).

The need for another competent right-shot defender that relegates Hamonic to the press box is real, so it makes sense for general manager Steve Staios to turn over every stone even if it was improbable that Jacob Trouba would waive his no-trade clause to play in Canada or that the Senators would overlook his ineffective play this season to consider absorbing the money involved (an $8 million AAV, but a $6 million base salary).

Emily Kaplan linked the Senators to Trouba, but t is possible that Staios was exhausting every creative avenue for the Senators to get the Rangers to take some of their sunk costs or retain enough of Trouba's salary to make it worthwhile. At the same time, it makes more sense for the Senators to target the Rangers' underperforming mid-tier players to bolster its depth rather than roll the dice on an expensive veteran.

Once the Rangers dealt Trouba the Anaheim Ducks, things got silly.

Larry Brooks published an article in the New York Post detailing how Trouba's departure was the first in a series of moves designed to shake up the Rangers' roster.

"The Rangers trading their captain will not be a one-off. Excising Trouba takes care of one issue but Drury has spent the week in trade talks with multiple clubs, with The Post learning that Ottawa's Brady Tkachuk has become the Rangers' primary target.

A trade for the Senators' 25-year-old hardscrabble captain would immediately change the Blueshirts' identity. The package going the other way would obviously have to be significant and could very well include Alexis Lafreniere."

The Senators' pushback was immediate.

Ian Mendes, the organization's vice president of communications, dropped a bomb on 'X' poking fun at the Post's use of 'Whopper' in its headline.

Postmedia's Bruce Garrioch instinctively contacted his sources to get their reaction to the report.

"While a New York Post report on Friday morning suggested the Rangers were working on a blockbuster deal to acquire the Ottawa Senators captain as part of a trade that would involve defenceman Jacob Trouba, a well-placed source told Postmedia, '"It's total bulls***.'"

Another source called the Tkachuk report "garbage."

All that matters to the Senators is that Brooks likely isn't concocting this story out of thin air. A source of his, potentially within the Rangers' organization, is feeding him erroneous information that Tkachuk is a target of trade.

After paying a heavy price for the previous regime's willful ignorance in its handling of the Evgenii Dadonov trade, the Senators should understandably be irate.

If Brooks' source is spreading pure fabrication, the only explanation is that it would be fuelled by a malicious intent to sow discord between Tkachuk and the Senators; Ottawa has every right to be irate.

Related: Jakob Chychrun Has More Goals Than All Seven Ottawa Senators Defencemen Combined

Related: Just Stop It. Ottawa Senators Captain Brady Tkachuk Isn't Going Anywhere

Related: Ottawa Senators Captain Brady Tkachuk: 'The Emotion Of The Game Is A Strength And A Flaw (Of Mine)'