The Senators Are Asking a Different Question This Season

There is something interesting happening in Ottawa, and it goes beyond the players who came and went this summer. For a long time, the Senators were a team built around Brady Tkachuk. He was the face of the franchise, the emotional leader and the player who seemed to represent what Ottawa was supposed to be. Now he's gone, and the Senators are asking a different question.

What does this team look like when it isn't built around one player? That might be the most important change Ottawa made this summer.

Ottawa Is No Longer Tkachuk’s Team.

Trading Tkachuk to Florida was obviously a huge move. You don't trade away the captain and face of your franchise without changing your team’s personality. But Ottawa didn't simply replace him with another player.

Instead, the Senators appear to be spreading that responsibility around. Tim Stützle is coming off an 83-point season. Jake Sanderson has developed into one of the league's better young defencemen. Both are only 24, and both now have a much bigger role in defining where this franchise is going.

Stützle and Sanderson aren't Tkachuk replacements in the traditional sense. They don't have to be. Ottawa doesn't need another Brady Tkachuk. It needs to become a team with enough important players that losing a star doesn't change the organization's entire identity. That's a different kind of maturity.

The additions of William Eklund and Andrei Burakovsky fit into that idea, too. They aren't being asked to become the face of the Senators. They're being asked to contribute to a team that already has a young core.

The Senators May Finally Have Enough Pieces to Find Out What They Are.

This is the part of Ottawa's situation that I find most interesting. For years, the Senators were always described in terms of what they might become. There was young talent. There were prospects. There were exciting players. There was always another season coming when everything might finally come together. Now they have to find out.

Stützle has to continue being a top-line player. Sanderson has to keep developing into the defenceman Ottawa believes he can become. Eklund and Burakovsky have to replace some of the offence that left with Tkachuk. And Claude Giroux, at 38, has to continue providing the veteran presence that young teams need.

None of that guarantees a Stanley Cup. But it does give Ottawa something it hasn't had in a long time: a clearer idea of what the team is supposed to become. And maybe that's the real story.

The Senators are trying to build a team, not replace a player.

They're trying to build a team where they don't need a single player to carry the franchise's identity. That's a much harder thing to build. It's also probably a much better way to build a Stanley Cup contender.