Ottawa Senators Tickets

The Ottawa Senators are a professional ice hockey team based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. They play in the National Hockey League. The NHL's planned 1992 expansion had several strong contenders, but, starting in 1989, original owner Bruce Firestone put together an energetic bid to revive NHL hockey in Ottawa, using the last surviving original Senator, Frank Finnigan, as its public face. The new-look Senators won one of the two slots (along with the Tampa Bay Lightning) and began play in 1992. The Senators' bid had been considered something of a long-shot, and ran into financial trouble immediately. Firestone had trouble borrowing money to meet the 50 million dollar expansion fee. It is of note that in the 1995-1996 season, the Senators moved from the Ottawa Civic Centre to the Palladium (now known as Scotiabank Place) on January 15th 1996, which was in the near-by city of Kanata (which amalgamated under the City of Ottawa in 2000). Unfortunately, as with the Lightning's campaign—which many felt similarly won its bid over a more favoured St. Petersburg group because it was led by former NHL great Phil Esposito—good public relations could not disguise the lack of talent. The modern-day Senators played their first game in the Ottawa Civic Centre, a small arena by professional standards, seating 9,862, and beat the Montreal Canadiens 5-3. Tragically, Finnigan died before the team started play, and the win against the Habs was the last bit of glory the new Senators would see; they were the worst team in the league, going 10-70-4 (24 points) in the 1992-93 season (the second-year San Jose Sharks had a technically better season at 11-71-2 (24 points), since the first tiebreaker in the NHL is number of wins). The Senators and their fans would suffer through four more last-place finishes. In the first round of the 2004 NHL playoffs, the Senators lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs for the 4th time in 4 series against the Leafs. Ottawa had developed a strong rivalry with their Ontario cousins and there was a great deal of pressure on the team to finally defeat their archrivals, especially since they consistently finished higher in the regular season standings. Two days after the Senators' loss, coach Jacques Martin was fired, and goaltender Patrick Lalime was later traded to St. Louis. Jacques Martin had been coach of the Senators for eight and a half years. Martin was widely respected, had a 341-255-96 regular season record with the Senators and had led the team to eight consecutive playoff appearances, and was widely credited with changing the team into a strong league leader. However, after losing eight of twelve playoff series, including four out of four over five years to the Maple Leafs, team management felt that a new coach was required for playoff success.