Five Thoughts For Friday: Divisional Rivalries, Giroux, and Team Names

Where are the rivalry games?

Some ticket packages, as well as home opener tickets, have gone on sale, and I’ve been seeing a lot of people comment on one particularly strange aspect of the Sens’ 2024-25 schedule: the fact that there is only one home game against the Leafs. With all due respect to people who pay for their ticket packages by selling tickets to Leafs fans, I’m not particularly worried about giving Leafs fans fewer opportunities to invade our arena. This does, however, highlight a general trend of the NHL offering fewer and fewer in-division games.

With the league now up to 32 teams, that means 31 of each team’s 41 games are already determined, with the other 10 being distributed between division rivals and other teams in their conference. That’s not a lot of games to go around. It’s been very weird, over the last few years, having to wait months for the Sens’ first game against the Habs, or the Leafs, or even the Red Wings. Give us more! We need more time to build up the rivalries!

Remember when the whole Brendan Gallagher vs Tim Stützle thing happened and then we only had to wait like two weeks for the rematch? The back to back games against the Red Wings in 2023? More of that! The Sens and Leafs haven’t even played each other since the Ridly Greig Incident™, and that’s a travesty. The whole reasoning behind the new playoff schedule was to improve divisional rivalries, but you know what helps with that? Regular season games. I want more dumb drama and I want it to play out over the course of multiple games during the regular season.

Of course, the 2021 bubble season showed us that there’s a limit. We all got tired of playing the same teams over and over and over again. I also understand why it’s important to have each team visit once; it would suck to be a fan of an out of town team and not be able to see them once a year. There’s no perfect solution, but I still feel like we need more rivalry games during the regular season.

Another fresh start for Colin White?

It was a sad day when Colin White was bought out in 2022, although it wasn’t entirely unexpected. The young centre was well liked by fans and teammates alike despite his injury troubles and disappointing results on the ice. I know I’m not the only fan who was rooting for him to figure things out on another NHL team. Unfortunately, it looks like that won’t be happening after all; the former first round pick has signed with the San Jose Barracuda, the Sharks’ AHL affiliate.

It sucks to see him out of the NHL, but I’m sure he’ll be a great veteran presence on a good farm team. I just hope he can stay healthy and make himself useful.

Team Names

A professional women’s sports team in Ottawa has a name!

No, not that one.

Our new women’s soccer team will officially be called The Ottawa Rapid FC, which I think is cool. It’s fun branding, it makes sense for the city, there’s a lot you can do with it. What I find really funny, though, is that that makes two professional sports teams that have shown up this summer and immediately landed on great branding (the other being the Ottawa Black Bears lacrosse team). PWHL Ottawa… what’s the hold up?

Apparently we’re supposed to get the team nicknames in about a month, so I really hope they’re not the terrible ones that the PWHL filed trademarks for last year. The league has had a full year to come up with something good. Recent history has shown us that it’s not that hard (although I personally am terrible at coming up with these sorts of things, so I’ll leave it to the professionals). We need a name, and we need it to be good.

Giroux's future

Recent discussions about Sidney Crosby not signing a contract extension this summer have made me think about how Giroux's kind-of-but-not-really-similar situation has slipped a little bit under the radar.

Giroux is entering the last year of his contract, and it doesn't sound like there's been any talk of an extension. Personally, I’m not worried yet. Giroux is getting old by NHL standards, so who knows when his play will start to decline? It also makes perfect sense that he doesn’t want to commit long-term to this team until they improve in 2024-25.

It does make me think of how strange it is that Giroux signed with Ottawa at all in 2022. He’s a very competitive guy who’s never won the cup and is nearing the end of his career, so my instinct is to say that if the Sens aren’t in a playoff spot by the deadline then he’s gone. And yet, he knew in 2022 that the Sens might not make the playoffs in his first year and probably wouldn’t be serious contenders until his contract was up. He basically said so in his first interview. That was not a short term, “one last shot at a cup” kind of decision. He didn’t come here to chase a cup; he came here because Brady Tkachuk is cool and because he loves buying poutine from food trucks in Canadian Tire parking lots.

Has his opinion changed? Maybe. Selfishly, I hope it hasn’t. I also think him sticking around could help inspire this team. Give them a sense of urgency.

Re: John Tavares being stripped of the Leafs’ captaincy

Lol. Lmao, even.

I love watching the Leafs’ annual tradition of declaring that they’re going to change things, and then not changing anything. Stripping Tavares of the captaincy and giving it to Matthews when they could have waited a year for his contract to end is so messy and it’s not even that significant a change.

As Sens fans know, choosing a captain is more symbolic and vibes-based than anything, so I guess I can understand making the best player captain and symbolically ushering in a new era. I do think it's a bit cringe to just give the "C" to your best player, but I can see how Matthews makes sense for the Leafs. Mostly, I am pointing and laughing at them for spending yet another summer promising big changes that never actually happen.

Our captain is still cooler than their captain, and that's what matters.