5 Legendary Ottawa Senators Who Didn’t Retire With the Team – The Hockey Writers –

Before his trade to the Florida Panthers in late June, Brady Tkachuk was the fifth-highest-scoring Ottawa Senator in club history with 463 points in 572 games. Though he forced his way out of the organization, Tkachuk joins other active Sens legends, like Erik Karlsson and Mark Stone, who have been traded in years past.

While their careers aren’t yet over, there is no way of telling the chances either of them will return to Ottawa at some point at the end of their journeys. If that doesn’t happen, the doors are officially closed, and all three will join an elite list of legendary Senators to not retire with the team they started with – an already star-studded list which we will look at today.

5. Alexei Yashin

With 491 points in 504 games between the 1993-94 and 2000-01 seasons, it’s no secret Alexei Yashin made a big impact in the Senators’ offence. As the team’s first-ever draft pick – second overall in 1992 – and the team’s leading scorer for six of his seven seasons in Ottawa, he provided the jolt that the reincarnation of the Sens needed to start building up.

Some might wonder why the fourth-highest scorer in club history is just at five, and that’s because Yashin’s career never really excelled after a blockbuster trade to the New York Islanders. Getting Zdeno Chara among other assets in return, the trade gave the Senators the shakeup they were looking for after making it past the first round just once with Yashin.

But what about the player’s change in scenery? Yashin did tally 290 points in 346 games with the Islanders, including a 75-point, 32-goal first season with the club, but his offensive abilities took a nose dive after that. As a result of his on-ice performance declining, the Isles bought out the final four seasons of Yashin’s 10-year, $87.5 million deal.

He would wrap up his professional career in his home nation of Russia, with Yaroslavl Lokomotiv, St. Petersburg and CSKA Moscow. Despite a not-so-ideal back half of his playing days, Yashin made the most of his NHL journey with the Senators. The infamous contract holdout in the 1990-00 season is an entirely different story, but the talent was enough to be one of the first faces of the modern-day Senators. 

4. Marian Hossa

Most of today’s hockey audience might not remember that before all the championship glory with the Chicago Blackhawks, Marian Hossa’s career started in Ottawa. The Senators drafted him 12th overall in the 1997 Draft and got six full seasons out of the Slovak winger, which got better year-by-year in point totals.

Hossa tallied 188 goals and 390 points in 467 games with Ottawa, including four 30-goal seasons and three 70-plus point campaigns. His best year was when he scored 45 goals in 2002-03 – finishing fourth in the league that season – and also put up 16 playoff points en route to the Senators’ run to the Eastern Conference Final.

The only reason Sens’ management decided to cut ties with Hossa was that they saw a player who they thought could bring them to the top: Dany Heatley. Like the Yashin trade several years earlier, the Senators wanted a shakeup after some disappointing playoff runs and were looking to make some noise coming out of the 2005 Lockout. 

The trade for Heatley saw Hossa and veteran defenceman Greg de Vries go to the then-Atlanta Thrashers, who were looking for their own shakeup after not even making the playoffs since re-entering the league as an expansion team in 1999-00. Heatley played four seasons with Ottawa, giving them the jolt they needed with consecutive 50-goal, 100-point showings in his first two years before ultimately being traded to the San Jose Sharks.

While the Senators did reach a Stanley Cup Final with Heatley, Hossa, however, went on to reach five – once each with the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings, then three more times with the Blackhawks, where he helped the club take each of them. He was a playoff warrior outside of Ottawa with 114 points in 150 games, but if it weren’t for that trade for Heatley, things might have looked a whole lot different for both Hossa and the Sens. 

3. Wade Redden

If you could believe it, a defender who had 457 points in 1,023 career games is still the sixth highest-scoring player in Senators history. Wade Redden’s 410 points are second only to Erik Karlsson’s 518 for the club’s top-scoring defencemen all-time. 

Redden was drafted second overall by the Islanders in 1995, but ended up with the Senators after a complex three-team trade involving Kirk Muller going to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the first overall selection in that same draft, Brian Berard, going to Long Island.  

Forget scoring for a second, though. In his 838 games with the Senators, good for fourth all-time, Redden had a very underrated hockey IQ, making calm and precise on-ice decisions with the puck. He never relied on physicality for his role, just smart positioning and a smooth defensive style – nothing like the common crash-and-bang defenders at the time. 

A valuable piece of some successful Sens teams in the 2000s – most notably the 2007 Stanley Cup Final group – Redden’s Ottawa tenure came to an end in the 2008 offseason, when he signed a six-year, $39 million deal with the New York Rangers. This is unfortunately where things would start to tail off for the Senator of 11 seasons. 

After his first season with the Rangers, where he put up career-lows in points and plus/minus, Redden only played five more seasons of pro hockey – two of them in the American Hockey League (AHL) after being bought out by the Rangers. He ended his career in 2012-13 on the losing side of the Stanley Cup Final with the Boston Bruins. It’s safe to say Redden’s career, defined by steadiness and stability, was forged in Ottawa before earning a big payday elsewhere. It’s also what earned him a spot in the Senators’ Ring of Honour in December 2022. 

2. Jason Spezza

These last two homegrown talents are the more memorable ones for Sens fans, and for good reason. Drafted with the 2001 second-overall pick acquired in the Yashin trade, Jason Spezza only became the modern-Sens’ second-best player in both goals (251) and points (687).

These include four 30-goal and 80-plus-point regular seasons, with his best being a 90-point campaign in 2005-06. Spezza never put up insane stats every season, but his craftiness, along with Heatley and Daniel Alfredsson among others, made the Senators’ offence special every time they hit the ice. In the playoffs, he tallied 52 points in 56 games – including 22 points on that 2007 Stanley Cup Final team.

Unfortunately, after some more frustrating playoff performances by the club along with years of coming up short, fans started taking their frustrations out on many aspects of the team, but mainly on Spezza. After one season as captain in 2013-14, Spezza decided he needed a “change in scenery” from the heat felt in Ottawa. He requested and was granted a trade to the Dallas Stars in the summer of 2014. 

Spezza played five seasons with the Stars, making the playoffs with them just twice, before finishing the final three years of his career with the Ontario-rivalled Toronto Maple Leafs – another bitter pill for fans to swallow with one of their greats. Much like Yashin’s situation, Spezza’s tenure in Ottawa ended with a bit of frustration, but the accomplishments and longevity within the organization can’t be denied. 

1. Daniel Alfredsson

There’s nothing to be said about Alfredsson’s impact on the organization. Tops in the franchise history books with 426 goals and 1,108 points. Second only to Chris Phillips in games played for the club with 1,178. A Calder Memorial Trophy winner for his rookie season performance in 1996. Twice a 40-goal man with a single 100-point campaign. Captain for 14 seasons with a King Clancy Memorial Trophy and a Mark Messier Leadership Award to further demonstrate how strong a leader he was. 

Alfie had all the accomplishments of a franchise face in what was a certified Hall of Fame career. What fans might not remember is that Alfredsson’s career didn’t end in Ottawa – he spent his final season with the Red Wings. Why? Not because of money, as he only signed for $5.5 million with Detroit in the 2013 offseason, but because the late Eugene Melnyk wouldn’t commit to making the Senators a better team. 

Because of Melnyk basically declining Alfredsson’s last request for one more competitive season, a Senator of 17 years was forced to retire in another red uniform. He might still lead the franchise in scoring by 11 kilometres, but Alfredsson would have played all 1,246 games of his career with Ottawa if it weren’t for this, especially after suiting up 68 times for the Wings in his final go-around. 

Alfie would return to the organization multiple times after his career ended. First, as a senior advisor of hockey operations shortly after he retired, but he stepped down from that post in 2017 due to a desire to be closer to family. He then returned as an assistant coach for the past three seasons, but not before also joining the Leafs on their staff – ironically aligning with his career rival, Mats Sundin, after all those Battles of Ontario. 

It’s sad to revisit how so many franchise faces not only couldn’t play out their careers in Ottawa, but how some of their tenures with the organization ended. However, no matter if the player wanted more money or if management saw a different direction for the club, each story only reinforces the strong narrative that hockey is a business. It shouldn’t, however, take away from what the players on this list, or anyone to come through the organization, have done for hockey in Ottawa.