A single NHL trade, long ago, was the spark for the incredible growth in the sport and the league that has trickled down to the Senators.
Take a look at the birthplaces of the Ottawa Senators’ top five scorers.
Viersen, Germany.
Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Whitefish, Montana.
Whitehorse, Yukon.
Scottsdale, Arizona.
There's not a thing wrong with any of that, but a generation ago, you'd rarely see those cities/towns appear on an NHL roster, much less attached to its five best players.
There was a time when top scorers seemed to come almost exclusively from Canada. Even smaller Canadian cities, towns, and villages were pumping out more NHL talent than entire hockey-playing countries.
So how did we get here? As others have done before, you can probably trace a straight line back to one trade. The trade.
When Wayne Gretzky was sent to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988, it wasn't just a trade away from Edmonton. It was a trade from Canada. But whether anyone knew it at the time or not, it's now crystal clear that it planted the seeds for the incredible growth we've seen in the league and the sport over the past four decades.
Hockey moved into Hollywood, celebrities filled the rink-side seats, and kids in California, who had never seen an ODR much less skated on one, suddenly had the game's greatest superstar right in their backyard. It was cool to be a hockey fan in places that hadn't cared about the sport before. Like, at all.
And from there, the league blossomed.
Within five years of the Gretzky deal, the NHL had taken up residence in San Jose, Tampa Bay, Florida, and Anaheim. When Gary Bettman became commissioner in 1993, he leaned even further into the belief that NHL hockey could now thrive anywhere in North America, thanks to the Gretzky effect.
And it has.
League revenues are at record levels, player salaries continue to skyrocket, the salary cap keeps climbing (moving to $113.5 million in 2027-28), and the world is taking notice.
Meanwhile, international tournaments are always a battle for Canada. We're still the best at hockey, but losing isn't just a once-in-a-while thing anymore. Collectively, the rest of the world wins just as much as Canada now, and after the American sweep in Milan, who knows what the future holds?
But the full measure of hockey’s growth isn’t found just at international events. It’s found in NHL dressing rooms.
Admittedly, I'm taking liberties with the Sens' birthplaces as a jumping off point. The Sens top five scorers, Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, Jake Sanderson, Dylan Cozens, and Brady Tkachuk hail from non-traditional markets for various reasons, and they didn't all grow up exactly where they were born. Batherson, Sanderson, and Tkachuk had dads who were pros and ended up elsewhere.
But Tkachuk grew up in St. Louis, which wasn't always the minor hockey hotbed it's become, and Batherson spent his early minor hockey in Germany.
Speaking of which, Stutzle is also a fine example of the game's growth, that a player so fast and skilled developed completely in Germany. He never played in the CHL and made a last second decision to play pro at home instead of the University of New Hampshire. It's a feather in the cap of Germany's developmental model and the level of passion for the game that now exists there.
Markets that once felt experimental have become established. Kids in Germany or Arizona (or wherever) have grown up with both an interest and opportunity that simply didn’t exist before.
The Senators’ top five scorers aren’t a gimmick or a trivia answer. They’re just a reflection of hockey's growth and its ever-growing worldwide popularity. And if you’re wondering how we got here, you can still trace that line back to 1988, when Gretzky's arrival woke up America.
The dominoes just fell from there.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
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