The Ottawa Senators released their 2026-27 regular-season schedule on Thursday, and the date circled hardest in the release is Wednesday, Oct. 21, when Brady Tkachuk comes back to Canadian Tire Centre with the Florida Panthers. It will be the first time Ottawa faces the captain it traded in June, five seasons after he took the job.
Tkachuk left as the franchise’s modern reference point. Per TSN, he finished his Ottawa tenure leading the club over that span in goals (213), points (463), power-play goals (62), shots (2,202), hits (1,921), game-winning goals (28) and penalty minutes (821). He requested a trade before being dealt to Florida for the No. 9 and No. 25 picks in the 2026 draft, a 2027 second-rounder and a conditional 2029 first. Ottawa turned part of that return into roster help. Whether the trade looks like a reset or a retreat will be argued all season, and the first live referendum is 18 days into it.
The rest of the schedule is unusually front-loaded with travel. The Senators open Oct. 3 at Toronto — the ninth time they have started a season against the Maple Leafs — then play Boston and Detroit before the home opener Oct. 8 against Philadelphia. Four separate five-game road trips are built into the year, the first leaving for Las Vegas on Oct. 27. In December the club plays two neutral-site games against the Chicago Blackhawks in Dusseldorf, Germany, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 20 as part of the NHL Global Series, the second with an 8 a.m. Eastern puck drop.
The relief comes later. Ottawa’s longest homestand runs six games from Jan. 20 through Feb. 9, wrapped around a bye week from Jan. 31 to Feb. 8, and the schedule ends April 10 at home against Montreal. The back-to-back count holds at 14, identical to last season, when the Senators went 8-5-1 in the front halves and 9-3-2 in the second halves — a rare case of a team playing better on the tired night. With 84 games now on the calendar for the first time since 1993-94, Ottawa will visit 30 of the league’s other 31 cities.
For fantasy purposes, the December Germany trip and the four five-game road stretches are the scheduling quirks worth logging in weekly leagues, where Ottawa’s usage of its goaltending tandem across those blocks will matter more than any individual matchup. Tkachuk owners get one Ottawa game in October and another Nov. 25 when the Senators visit Florida; the emotional return does not change his category profile, which remains shots, hits and power-play goals in volume.
