Senators Without Brady Tkachuk: What the Maple Leafs Actually Face

The Ottawa Senators open training camp next week without Brady Tkachuk for the first time since 2018, and the version of this team the Maple Leafs will see repeatedly in 2026-27 is meaningfully different from the one that made the playoffs last spring. Faster, younger on the wing, lighter in the hard areas, and without the player who defined the franchise's identity for five seasons.

Toronto's prospects play Ottawa's in Gatineau this weekend and the two clubs meet twice in the preseason on Sept. 23. That is the appetizer. The main course is a wild-card race the Leafs cannot afford to lose to a team that just traded its captain.

What Ottawa gave up and got back

The Senators traded Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers on June 21, sending the captain to join his brother Matthew. Ottawa's return was a picks package: the Nos. 9 and 25 selections in the 2026 draft, a conditional 2029 first-rounder and a 2027 second-round pick.

Two days later, general manager Steve Staios flipped that No. 9 pick to San Jose for William Eklund. The 23-year-old winger had 53 points in 78 games with the Sharks last season, 15 goals and 38 assists, and steps into a top-six role. Ottawa also acquired André Burakovsky from Chicago for a 2027 sixth-round pick on June 26. Burakovsky, 31, had 33 points in 75 games with the Blackhawks.

Add it up and Ottawa turned a 30-goal power forward and franchise captain into a 23-year-old playmaker, a bounce-back veteran, a late first-rounder, a conditional first and a second. That is a reasonable haul for a player who forced his way out. It is not a replacement.

The Senators without Brady Tkachuk are a different team, not a worse one

This is the part Leafs fans should not get wrong. Ottawa is not rebuilding. Tim Stützle and Jake Sanderson are now the co-faces of the franchise, both in their primes, both signed. Travis Green is back behind the bench. The Senators made the playoffs last season and return most of the structure that got them there.

What changes is style. Tkachuk was the net-front, the agitation, the player who made Ottawa unpleasant to play against for 60 minutes. Eklund is a speed-and-space forward who gets to the net by beating people rather than through them. Burakovsky is skill, not weight. The Senators will be quicker in transition and less physically taxing to defend.

For Toronto specifically, that is a trade-off rather than a gift. The Leafs have historically struggled against heavy Atlantic teams and defended skill better than force. A faster, lighter Ottawa may actually be an easier matchup for Toronto's blue line even if the Senators are just as good. It is a worse matchup for Toronto's defensive coverage in transition, which was the single biggest failure of last season.

The Batherson clock is the real variable

Ottawa's most consequential unresolved item is not the captaincy. It is Drake Batherson's contract.

Batherson is eligible for an extension and both sides have said publicly they want a long-term deal, but reporting through this week has them not close. The relevant date is Sept. 15: under the new collective bargaining agreement that takes effect Sept. 16, the maximum re-signing term for a player's own club drops from eight years to seven. That is not a deadline for a deal, it is a deadline for a specific kind of deal.

If Ottawa loses a top-six winger to a contract standoff months after losing its captain, the Senators' margin gets thin quickly. We laid out the Sept. 16 mechanics in detail here, and the same clock applies to half a dozen negotiations around the league.

Who wears the C in Ottawa

Nobody yet. The Senators have not named Tkachuk's successor, and the obvious candidates are Stützle and Sanderson. Ottawa is the second Atlantic team heading into camp with a vacant captaincy, after Detroit stripped the letter from Dylan Larkin on Friday following his trade request.

That gives the division an unusual look. Toronto has a settled captain in Auston Matthews and a vacant alternate's letter. Detroit has no captain and no permanent general manager. Ottawa has no captain and a contract standoff. Florida has both Tkachuks and a healthy Aleksander Barkov. The stability gap in this division is not where it was two years ago.

The goaltending question, and a familiar name

Ottawa's crease is the quietest reason to take the Senators seriously, and it has a Toronto fingerprint on it. Samuel Ersson arrived in Ottawa in late June for a 2027 fifth-round pick, 11 days after John Chayka acquired him from Philadelphia in the Joseph Woll trade and with no intention of keeping him. The Leafs recouped an asset. The Senators added a goaltender with NHL starts on his résumé for the cost of a lottery ticket.

That is a small transaction that could look large in March. Toronto's own crease is now Sergei Bobrovsky at 38 and Anthony Stolarz, a pairing that carries genuine upside and genuine age risk, and the starter question has not been settled publicly. Ottawa does not have that ambiguity in the same way, and goaltending variance decides more wild-card races than forward depth does.

The Senators' blue line is also the more settled unit. Sanderson is a legitimate No. 1 defenceman entering his prime on a long-term deal. Toronto is counting on Chris Tanev being healthy for the first time in a year, Rielly absorbing fewer minutes alongside Raddysh, and a 24-year-old in Andrae taking a step. Both projects can work. Only one of them requires three things to go right at once.

What it means for Toronto's playoff math

The Leafs finished 78 points last season and missed the postseason. Projection models have Toronto around a coin flip for a playoff spot, and most previews slot the Leafs fourth in the Atlantic, behind Florida and Tampa Bay and around Ottawa.

That means the Senators are not a team Toronto passes on talent. They are a team Toronto passes by taking head-to-head points and by being the better bet in a tight March. Ottawa's roster turnover created a window in exactly one respect: an offence rebuilt around new pieces takes time to cohere, and the Senators will be figuring out their top six in October while Toronto is trying to establish a new system under Jim Hiller on a 13-day camp. Both clubs are solving problems early. Whoever solves them faster banks the points.

The counterargument is that Ottawa has continuity where it counts. Green has been there. Sanderson and Stützle have been there. Toronto changed coaches, general managers, goaltenders and roughly a third of the roster. Continuity is worth something in October, and Toronto does not have much of it. See the standings page as the season develops.

What's next

Toronto and Ottawa prospects meet Saturday at 6 p.m. ET in Gatineau at the NHL Prospect Challenge, without Gavin McKenna, who was pulled from the tournament on Friday. Both clubs open camp Sept. 17, meet in split-squad preseason games on Sept. 23, and start the regular season Sept. 29.

Watch two things in Ottawa between now and opening night: whether Batherson signs, and who gets the C. The first decides whether the Senators are a playoff team. The second tells you how confident the front office is that they are.