The longest-serving Senator takes the helm, rewarding a decade of loyalty through the dark rebuild years.
The Ottawa Senators have their new captain, and in a lot of ways, they couldn't have made a more fitting choice.
The Senators announced Thomas Chabot as their new captain at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, handing the "C" to the longest-serving player on the roster and someone who has been around for the organization's long climb back to relevance.
Chabot takes over the captaincy left vacant when Brady Tkachuk was traded to the Florida Panthers in June after requesting a move. Tkachuk had served as the Sens' captain for the previous five seasons.
There were certainly other strong candidates.
Jake Sanderson has already emerged as Ottawa's No. 1 defenceman and figures to be one of the faces of the franchise for years. Tim Stützle is entering his seventh season in Ottawa and is one of the club's most important players. And Claude Giroux brings more leadership experience than just about anyone in the NHL.
All three of those men will wear the A as alternate captains this season, but Chabot's connection to this organization runs deeper than anyone else's.
The 29-year-old has played his entire NHL career with the Senators. He has appeared in 569 regular-season games, scoring 78 goals and adding 257 assists for 335 points. Last season, Chabot had seven goals and 31 points in 57 games.
He may no longer be Ottawa's No. 1 defenceman, pounding out 30 minutes of ice time every night, but Chabot is still a very important No. 2 and a major part of the Sens' top four.
More importantly, nobody on this roster has lived through more of the Senators' ups and downs than Chabot.
He was here before the rebuild began. He was here through the messiest parts of it, when playoff hockey seemed a long way off and the Sens were regularly near the bottom of the NHL standings.
And when there wasn't much tangible evidence that better days were coming, Chabot bought in anyway.
In September 2019, at age 22, he signed an eight-year, $64-million contract to remain in Ottawa. At the time, the Senators were coming off a 64-point season and had just finished 31st overall.
Chabot didn't wait for the rebuild to succeed before committing to it. Chabot set a template for other young players in the core.
He then stayed through all of it: the losses, the coaching changes, the ownership change and all the seasons when spring hockey was something other teams played.
Now he's still here as the Senators prepare for a third consecutive playoff push.
Chabot's ability to communicate well in both English and French gives the Senators a captain who can comfortably represent the organization on both sides of the Ottawa River. That's significant for a franchise that has long talked about strengthening its connection with hockey fans in Gatineau and western Quebec.
Chabot will succeed past captains Laurie Boschman (1992-93), Gord Dineen, Mark Lamb and Brad Shaw (1993-94 rotation), Randy Cunneyworth (1994 to 1998), Alexei Yashin (1998-99), Daniel Alfredsson (1999 to 2013), Jason Spezza (2013-14), Erik Karlsson (2014 to 2018) and Brady Tkachuk (2021 to 2026).
If there's one question attached to Tuesday's announcement, it's what happens beyond the next two seasons.
Chabot is entering the seventh season of the eight-year contract he signed in 2019. His $8-million-a-year deal runs through the 2027-28 season, after which he can become an unrestricted free agent at age 31.
The Senators have had more than their share of captains leave the organization over the years, and they've just watched it happen again with Tkachuk.
The last thing they would want is to name Chabot captain in 2026 and find themselves facing another major captaincy decision two years from now because he's headed elsewhere. That suddenly becomes a little more interesting when you're putting the "C" on his sweater.
Chabot was asked about that on Tuesday and said that Ottawa feels like home, speaking with pride about settling in as a member of this community.
“We’ve always said it. Ottawa feels like home,” Chabot said. “We bought our first house here. We started our family here. Becoming captain here is a huge honour.”
While there's no guarantee of anything this far away from Chabot's next contract, you'd have to think the Senators wouldn't have made this decision without feeling comfortable about Chabot's desire to remain in Ottawa beyond his current deal.
And Chabot's own words earlier this month certainly sound like those of a player who remains invested in what has been built here.
"You want guys to be here. You want guys to want to be part of this team and part of this city," Chabot said after Tkachuk's departure. "We feel like we're on the verge of starting to make the playoffs and building something."
Chabot knows better than anyone how long it took to get here. Now he's been rewarded for his loyalty, becoming the 11th captain of the Ottawa Senators.
By Steve Warne
The Hockey News
