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A Nice Bit of Low-Stakes Culture War: Brady Tkachuk returns to Ottawa
Brady Tkachuk is an NHL hockey player. He's the unfortunate-looking son of former NHL player Keith Tkachuk and younger brother of Matthew Tkachuk, Brady was drafted by the Ottawa Senators and was their captain for five years. This offseason he was traded to the Florida Panthers, his brother's team. Yesterday was his first game back in Ottawa.
The crowd was very, very mad. It's the most hostile return for a player to his old team in a long time, maybe decades.
So what gives?
Sports fans don't like it when a star player leaves the team; that shouldn't need an explanation, but there's a culture war angle to it too. The Tkachuk saga sits perfectly within the current rancor between the US and Canada. Well more specifically it exists pretty much just between the Trump administration and Canada, but since both the younger Tkachuks are perceived (accurately) to be Trump supporters that distinction only makes the Canadian reaction more intense. Hockey as a sport definitely leans conservative, especially among the players, and a number of American stars specifically cited Trump as an inspiration for their 2024 Gold Medal victory over Canada.
Brady is part of a trend of American stars in Canadian markets wanting out. There's a team USA group chat where American stars are supposedly being pressured by their peers to move: Tkachuk, Connor Hellebuyck, Quinn Hughes, and Dylan Larkin are all supposedly examples of this in action. This is basically one step above a conspiracy theory but the trend exists and certainly lots of (bitter) Canadian hockey fans believe it. More plausible is that Tkachuk wanted to play with his brother and was going to refuse to re-sign in Ottawa. Brady is a classic example of a player you love having on your team and hate everywhere else, so that combined with the normal tribalistic response to departing players further aggravates things. The Panthers also have a reputation as a very dirty (and worse, successful!) team, so that's a source of anger too. There were rumours and claims, real and imagined, of various grudges and beefs between current Senators fans and management with Tkachuk.
Throw all the frustrations of the trade war and Trump on top of this, plus Ottawa being a government town, and you've got a recipe for a mad crowd and a great spectacle. And it was great spectacle: the crowd was loud and angry, Brady scored the first goal to get the fans on edge, and then the home team came back and crushed them 5-1. One of the more enjoyable and intense regular season hockey games in recent history.
See, the Culture War doesn't have to ruin everything. Sometimes it just adds the right amount of spice.
I mean, politics might be one aspect of it, but the more likely reason for most is that in a sport where the teams all have more or less the same payroll amount, southern US states offer advantages that canadian teams cannot match. Most importantly: less taxation, more comfortable climate, less scrutiny/stress, more anonymity. Some of these are not just advantages for the players, but for their family as well. If you enjoy being a city's hero, have always dreamed of playing for your hometown, and don't mind that every little thing about you will be scrutinized by media for whom hockey is the #1 sport to cover, then yeah, canadian players might deliberately chose to go play in Montreal or Toronto. But for anyone who doesn't have that attachment, if you get the choice between you and your family living in Winnipeg, and being taxed harder for the privilege, or living in Florida or Las Vegas...
Eventually the league is going to have to address this problem; maybe salary cap has to be adjusted with a "desirability index". No trade clauses might need to go. Maybe some rules have to be drafted to make free agency blind to which team is making an offer. I don't know. But the current context is a problem if the league is trying to remain competitive.
It’s not just taxes- thé southern US is just generally a lot cheaper to live in compared to canada, salaries in the low millions go a lot farther.
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