Brady Tkachuk speaks out after humiliating loss on Saturday.
Tkachuk doesn't mince words.
The Ottawa Senators made some fairly significant moves during the offseason leading up to the 2022-23 National Hockey League regular season and as a result there was an expectation that the results on the ice would improve drastically. Fast forward a few months and the Senators now sit with a record of 19-20-3 on the season and are one of the worst teams in the Atlantic Division with only the Montreal Canadiens currently ranked lower.
Much of that could have been brushed aside as your normal growing pains with a relatively young core on your roster but on Saturday night the Senators suffered one of their ugliest losses of the season, the kind of loss that really makes reality sink in.
The Senators were dominated from start to finish by the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche and when the dust had finally, and mercifully, settled for the Senators they were looking at a lopsided 7-0 blowout.
Following the blowout, Senators captain Brady Tkachuk spoke to the media and somewhat understandably he was short with his words. Tkachuk, the Senators' captain, admitted that he simply did not know how to respond in the face of such a ugly defeat.
“It’s embarrassing. I’m at a loss for words," admitted Tkachuk on Saturday.
It sounds like this particularly brutal loss could lead to some changes down the line as well. TSN's Shawn Simpson has already called for some significant alterations to the lineup, suggesting that players on the Senators roster need to be held accountable and even went so far as to suggest that perhaps players should be called up from the American Hockey League.
Simpson would go a step further still and argued that players on expiring contracts should be shipped out of Ottawa sooner rather than later, as drastic changes appear to be in order.