Ugly locker room rumors emerge following Brady Tkachuk trade.
Ugly locker room rumors emerge following Brady Tkachuk trade.
Did Brady Tkachuk’s own teammates want him gone?
The Ottawa Senators did the unthinkable on Sunday when they announced that they had traded away star forward Brady Tkachuk, their very own captain. The news sent shockwaves through the hockey world and left everyone asking two questions. Why and why now?
Earlier today I covered a number of those reasons after NHL insider Elliotte Friedman shared his insights to the situation, but another report out of Montreal paints an even uglier picture of what may have transpired in Ottawa.
This one comes courtesy of Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports who recently revealed a great deal about what may have gone on behind the scenes in a French language tweet. Lavoie stated flatly that he believed the Senators faced tremendous pressure to make this trade a reality, pressure that may very well have come from the other players on the team.
From Lavoie:
For the [Ottawa Senators] to trade Brady Tkachuk, it means they were under pressure to do so. I’m told this pressure was also coming from the team’s locker room. This strongly explains why they agreed to trade him to a team in his own division. Brady Tkachuk will have been a controversial captain in Ottawa, and the big losers of this day are the [New York Rangers] who were dreaming of getting their hands on him.
Those are comments that will no doubt stir up a great deal of controversy as fans and pundits alike will undoubtedly speculate regarding which players in the Senators locker room were vocal about wanting to see Tkachuk move on to a different team.
Tkachuk was no stranger to controversy during his time in Ottawa, even perhaps rubbing some of his teammates the wrong way. Earlier in the season Tkachuk’s father, Keith Tkachuk, caused a controversy when his comments were perceived as a shot against Tkachuk’s teammate’s in Ottawa.
Tkachuk is also coming off of an abysmal playoff performance with the Senators, one that saw him put up no points and finish with a -4 during a 4 game sweep at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes, and who knows how that may have inflamed tensions in the Senators locker room at the end of the season.
