Brady Tkachuk returns to Ottawa: hat tricks, a tribute and a tight race

Florida was down 2-0 to Vancouver last Thursday with under nine minutes to play. Then Brady Tkachuk took the game over.

He scored with 8:49 left in regulation. He tied it with 12.8 seconds left. And 2:23 into overtime, he won it.

That was his second hat trick in two games. Two nights earlier he scored three times in 8:03 of the second period at Columbus. Six games into his Florida career, he had zero goals. Two games later, he had six.

Tonight he walks into Canadian Tire Centre in the other sweater. Panthers at Senators, 7:30 p.m. ET, is his first game in Ottawa since the June trade. Both teams have 12 points in the Atlantic, so this is more than a homecoming. It's a standings game with a story on top of it.

How the captain left

Tkachuk was Ottawa's guy for eight seasons. The Senators drafted him fourth overall in 2018, and he wore the C for the last five. He leaves with 572 games played, 10th most in team history, and 463 points, fifth most, per theScore. Last season he put up 59 points in 60 games.

The ending was rough. Carolina swept Ottawa in the first round of the 2026 playoffs. After that exit, Tkachuk asked for a trade. He wanted to play with his brother Matthew in Florida.

He got it on June 21. Ottawa got a real haul back: the No. 9 and No. 25 picks in the 2026 draft, a conditional 2029 first-rounder and a 2027 second-rounder, according to TSN and NHL.com. He still had two more seasons left on his contract, so this was a trade request, not a walk to free agency. That's the context the building brings tonight.

The slow start, then the flood

The first stretch in Florida didn't look like a blockbuster. He had no points through his first five games with the Panthers and one assist through six, per NHL.com and the AP. He was still playing his game, though. ESPN's box scores show 5 hits in each of his first two games and 7 in the loss at Buffalo.

Then came Oct. 13 at Columbus. He scored three straight Florida goals in the second period, two of them on the power play, and Matthew set up all three. Florida won 7-3.

Two nights later came the Vancouver comeback. That made him the third player in NHL history with natural hat tricks in back-to-back games, according to the AP. The other two: Petri Skriko for Vancouver in 1986, and Cy Denneny for Ottawa in 1923. He's also the third Panther with hat tricks in consecutive games, after Pavel Bure and Noel Acciari.

The run kept going. He set up two goals in Saturday's 8-3 win over Seattle, and he lands in Ottawa with 10 points (six goals, four assists) in his last four games. The league named him its First Star of the Week on Monday.

The shot volume climbed with the scoring. ESPN's box scores have him at 12 shots on goal in his first five games and 13 in his last two alone (6 against Vancouver, 7 against Seattle). That's 32 shots in nine games.

Matthew has been the engine. He leads Florida with 11 assists and 14 points, and ESPN credits him with an assist on four of Brady's six goals.

The night itself

The Senators plan to show a video tribute, per team president Cyril Leeder via Postmedia, as reported by theScore. How the crowd reacts after that is the open question. Tkachuk isn't trying to predict it. "I am definitely putting no expectations on it," he told NHL.com.

The family has been through this before. Matthew was traded from Calgary to Florida in 2022. On Nov. 29, 2022, he was booed when he touched the puck, then got a partial standing ovation during his video tribute, per NHL.com.

Panthers coach Paul Maurice said he expects Tkachuk's line to start, and that the night is a bigger deal for the home team. "Brady has handled this impeccably the entire time and he will continue to do that," Maurice told NHL.com.

The matchup under the homecoming

Strip away the noise and it's still a tight division game.

• Ottawa is 6-3-0 overall and 3-1-0 at home. It lost its last game 3-1 at Philadelphia on Oct. 17.
• Florida is 5-2-2 and has won three straight, but it's still missing Aleksander Barkov (lower body) and Brad Marchand (leg) on injured reserve, and ESPN's injury report also lists goalie Jacob Markstrom on IR. Akira Schmid was in net for both hat-trick wins.
• ESPN lists Thomas Chabot and William Eklund (ankle) as out for the Senators. Tim Stutzle leads Ottawa with five goals and 12 points.
• Florida flies out after the game for a back-to-back at Pittsburgh on Thursday.
• Discipline could swing it. Florida averages 12.8 penalty minutes a game, third-most in the league, and Ottawa ranks 10th at 10.3. Two of Brady's six goals came on the power play.

What it means on the board

The market has already moved on this one. Ottawa opened as the moneyline favorite on ESPN's odds feed, and as of Wednesday Florida was a slight favorite at -112 with Ottawa at -108. The total sat at 5.5. That's line movement the board tracks all day, not just at open.

For player markets, the research points at volume, not emotion. Brady's shots on goal went from 12 in five games to 13 in two, and his coach expects his line to start. Matthew's points carry the other half of the story, with an assist on four of his brother's six goals. Points props on Matthew are the kind of market where that shows up. With Florida on a back-to-back, check who starts in goal before you tap in on saves or totals.

Follow it live on the NHL board and free picks, see what cashed in our NHL recaps, and brush up on player props before puck drop.

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