OTTAWA — Outside forces have been good to the Ottawa Senators but, more importantly, their inside forces have been even better.

“We want playoffs!” and “Brady, Brady!” chants punctuated the Canadian Tire Centre on Sunday during a monumentally important and convincing 6-3 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes. The game was potentially a preview of a first-round matchup. As a result, as of Sunday’s end of business, the Senators sat one point ahead of their nearest rivals in a wild-card spot to make the playoffs. 

Stars got to be your stars, and the Senators sure have good ones. 

“You always think back to you being a kid, and you never expect that to happen ever in your life,” said Tkachuk, about the fans chanting his name. “And, yeah, I mean, it still brings a smile to my face.”

The night before, Senators head coach Travis Green felt his best players didn’t play well enough against the Minnesota Wild in a deflating 4-1 loss. Well, their stars responded. 

“You got to love playing in these types of games. You want players that step up when the stakes are the highest,” said Green. 

At his best, Tkachuk has been the emotional leader and a driver of play for his team, and his play was elevated Sunday night with two goals in a must-win game.  

In a memorable game several weeks ago, Tkachuk dropped the gloves off the opening face-off and then snatched a win against the New York Islanders with a goal in the final seconds of regulation. Now, the Senators have vaulted past the Islanders in the standings.  

The analytics back it up: Tkachuk is fourth in the NHL in expected-goals share (minimum 500 minutes played) at five-on-five. His line, along with Dylan Cozens and Ridly Greig, is first in the league in expected goals share amongst forward lines that have played at least 250 minutes. 

The Sens captain has been criticized for his podcast, which can stir the waters among fans and in the locker room. And his coach admitted that No. 7 was fatigued after the Olympics. Nevertheless, the ol’ Brady was in gear Sunday with five hits. 

Meanwhile, Stutzle’s goal on Sunday was peak German engineering. 

“It was a superstar moment,” said Tkachuk.

Since the 2024-25 campaign, Stutzle is 11th in wins above replacement, according to Evolving Hockey. We’ve said this before, but when a stat has Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Quinn Hughes, Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov in the top 10, you know it’s indicative of superstardom. 

Don’t forget the contributions by Sanderson, whose insertion into the lineup completely changes the dynamic of the Senators. Sanderson said he was rusty in his debut on Saturday against the Wild; not so much on Sunday, quarterbacking what had been a dormant power play to success while helping to keep one of the best shot-generating teams in the NHL to just 28 shots.

“He’s a Norris defenceman for a reason,” said Tkachuk. “When you have a top-five defenceman in the NHL back in your lineup, it just gives you a boost of energy.”

The Sanderson-Artem Zub pairing is legitimately one of the game’s best and gives the Senators a weapon most teams don’t have. The Senators sorely missed that for the previous month when their No. 1 defenceman was out with an injury. 

Among defensive pairs that have played over 400 minutes this season, the Senators have the top two pairs in terms of expected goals shared: Tyler Kleven and Jordan Spence are first, with Sanderson and Zub second. Given that Sanderson-Zub routinely matches up against the likes of McDavid and MacKinnon, that’s an indication of their effectiveness. 

The Senators didn’t carry the play in most games without Sanderson; expect that to change now in Ottawa’s favour. 

The stars may be aligning in Ottawa for a deep playoff run. 

Resiliency: There’s a reason the Presidents’ Trophy winner rarely wins the Stanley Cup: they haven’t faced enough adversity. 

And, boy, have the Senators faced enough injuries, made-for-TV drama and on-ice adversity. 

On Jan. 24, the Senators were 10 points out of a playoff spot; today, they are at a 71 per cent chance of participating in the fight for Lord Stanley, according to Moneypuck.com. 

The out-of-town scoreboard has blessed the Senators lately. Before Sunday, the Senators had gone 1-3-1 yet maintained their playoff position because the Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings and the New York Islanders (now led by Pete DeBoer) have fallen off a Parliament Hill-sized cliff. Unlike the Senators, most of them have flawed teams who routinely get outshot most nights but get propped up by excellent goaltending. 

“That’s a team that plays playoff hockey,” said Carolina’s Taylor Hall, talking about the Senators after Sunday’s game.

For two months, it seemed like every Senator win was immediately followed by wins for the teams they were chasing. Their opponents’ plunge back to reality is a welcome relief. 

Puck don’t lie: To do all of this while missing four of your top-six defencemen, and now three with Sanderson back, says how good this Senators team is. 

“It’s been crazy. I think we’re a little bit cursed right now on the back end. But guys have been playing awesome,” said Sanderson upon his return. 

The Senators have done well despite going up against a battle of attrition. Since Sanderson went down on March 7, the Senators have lost six defencemen to injury, including Sanderson until this weekend. In that time, they’ve gone 9-5-1, the ninth-best record since March 7. 

For a few worrisome moments on Sunday, it looked like Stutzle could be casualty after a nasty collision in the third, but he later returned. Stutzle did not speak to the media post-game because he was receiving treatment. But Green indicated Stutzle would be OK.

Plus, don’t think the drama surrounding Tkachuk and his podcast, and the unfortunate negativity surrounding Linus Ullmark’s mental health struggles haven’t made this season more draining than most seasons for the team. 

The Senators can look to the 2023 Florida Panthers that got into the playoffs in the last game of the season, only to make the Stanley Cup Finals. The Senators sit high in every statistical analytic category, from shot share to expected goal share, and their goaltending and penalty kill are improving. 

It all counts for nothing if the Senators don’t get in. If they do, you’d rather be a battle-tested warrior than a regular-season darling with few meaningful games down the stretch. 

Ullmark proves he’s ready: Ullmark played back-to-back nights on the weekend. After missing a game on March 28 to rest, some fans and hockey people were questioning his commitment to the team. Well, it’s clear he wants it. He’s now played in six of the Senators’ last seven games. Ullmark’s save percentage wasn’t great this weekend, but the Senators scored on themselves twice, so take that with a grain of salt. Ullmark is 25-12-8 this season. If Ullmark plays four of Ottawa’s remaining five games, he’ll have hit the 50-game benchmark for the first time in his career.

Stats of the night: The Senators have the 15th-easiest strength of schedule remaining, easiest than any of the teams chasing them. … The Senators have reached the 90-point threshold in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 2006-07 and 2007-08. 

CHICAGO — After the 2025 post-season, Kevin Gausman did something he’d never really done before.

Still stinging from the Blue Jays’ loss to the Dodgers in the World Series, Gausman felt compelled to look back and relive the October experience, good and bad. When he’d work out, he’d often put on radio or TV broadcasts of his starts.

It wasn’t something he ever set out to do, but once he started he felt it worked for him. First off, he could watch the game as a pitcher and analyze what he could have done differently. And the experience also reminded him “what a fun, exciting time” the 2025 post-season had been in Toronto.

As the winter progressed, Gausman went back through all of his playoff starts. Sometimes he’d listen to the home radio broadcast, other times he’d flip to the road feed, curious what they might have said. As the weeks went by, he watched “probably every pitch (he) threw,” all 436 of them. By his final appearance — Game 6 of the World Series — it could be painful to relive.

“Kind of heartbreaking at times,” Gausman said. “But I kind of needed it to get over it in a sense. It’s almost like when you have a bad breakup, I guess. If you have some voicemails, you’re going to listen to them for a while until you finally delete them.”

With a series against the Dodgers set to begin in Toronto on Monday, many of Gausman’s teammates will be coming face to face with similar emotions. On the schedule, it’s just another series in April, but any early season meeting between World Series opponents would inspire some strong emotions — and that’s especially true after a series that was closely contested all the way through extra innings of Game 7.

“It’ll bring back some memories for sure,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “It feels like we just played them. We still know they’re a damned good team. We still know they’ve got superstars up and down their lineup and really good pitching. I’m sure you guys (in the media) will have fun with it. There’s plenty of stories to write and I’m gonna get some sleep tonight with the media hours the next couple days.”

While the media presence will surely be significant, they aren’t alone in caring about this story. Near-sellout crowds are expected all week, and the players themselves have a heightened awareness of what’s ahead, as expected.

For instance, Gausman’s parents told him they planned to make a point of being there for the Dodgers series.

“It’s something we can’t ignore,” Gausman said. “We know we lost to them in the World Series last year.”

Others within the Blue Jays’ clubhouse were looking forward to the series for their own reasons. After starting Sunday’s loss to the White Sox, Eric Lauer said he’s hopeful playing the Dodgers can help the Blue Jays collectively reach a higher level of play.

“Everybody knows it’s going to be a good series,” he said. “It’s going to be another showdown. It’s going to be a good one for us to get back on track. We stumbled this (0-3) road trip, but it’s going to be a good reset for us to getting back to playing baseball the way we know how. Going against the Dodgers you can’t make stupid mistakes and you’ve got to really throw the ball well so hopefully this series really locks us back in.”

While Lauer’s not slated to pitch against the Dodgers this week, Gausman’s set to pitch Tuesday. And not only is he pitching, he currently lines up opposite World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who pitched opposite Gausman in Games 2 and 6 of the World Series, winning twice despite quality starts from Gausman both times.

Gausman knows the lineup he’ll face Tuesday is “really good — that’s why they won it back-to-back years.” So as the series approached, his focus was on attacking the Los Angeles hitters, not whether Yamamoto’s start day would line up with his again.

“You never know how it’s going to line up, a lot of things can change from day to day, so I don’t really look too much at who I’m going to be facing,” he said. ”But I will say at the same time, when you’re facing other established guys it’s fun. We kind of expect that the other guy is going to pitch well and I think they expect you to pitch well, so there’s the level of understanding that we’re both going to go out there and do our thing.”

Gausman then added that he hopes the Blue Jays score 10 runs per game. An offensive outburst like that would certainly help flip the narrative around the 2026 Blue Jays, a team that’s now struggling to find its footing. 

Yet the story of 2025 has been told by now. When the games counted most, the Dodgers found a way, leading to a painful ending for a particularly likeable Blue Jays team. Nothing that happens now will change that — but even with that knowledge in mind, the next few days may still be emotional.

“It’s just funny because it’s so early in the season still,” Gausman said. ”But yeah, I get it. I get the excitement behind it. It’s just two of the best teams from last year facing each other for the first time, so yeah, it’s going to be fun. I know there’s probably going to be a little bit more reactions from the fans during that series. But that’s what sports is all about.”