Inside the Dressing Room Problem That Pushed Tkachuk Out of Ottawa

The trade itself is old news by now — Brady Tkachuk is a Florida Panther, reunited with brother Matthew, and Ottawa walked away with a stack of draft picks. But new reporting is filling in a messier, more uncomfortable backstory about why it happened, and it centers around Brady’s allegedly selfish need to build his brand at the expense of his teammates.

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According to Elliotte Friedman, the fallout traces back to the period after this year’s Winter Olympics, when players around the league were simply worn down. In Ottawa, the situation was particularly problematic because Tkachuk was perceived as a player who’d given up on the Senators but was prioritizing playing for Team USA. All the while, he’d started a podcast with his brother that was ruffling feathers. Some of the comments were about his Senators teammate, specifically goaltender Linus Ullmark, and his Team USA brothers.

Friedman said he was contacted directly by a player about the situation, and pointed to one specific factor that “caused some problems”: the Tkachuk brothers’ podcast, Wingmen.

Bruce Garrioch’s reporting adds another layer, revealing that Tkachuk had actually been telling teammates for years that he had no intention of re-signing in Ottawa. He’d apparently been sharing this in the dressing room for four straight seasons, long before the trade became public.

A Podcast That Became a Distraction

The podcast became a signal of where Tkachuk’s real priorities sat — building a personal brand alongside Matthew rather than fully investing in Ottawa’s rebuild. One widely circulated clip resurfaced recently showing Tkachuk’s father, Keith, criticizing the Senators’ coaching staff and teammates on the show while Brady sat silently next to him.

Brady later said that his dad was an opinionated guy and wouldn’t apologize for him. He tried to divert the comments, suggesting they weren’t about the Senators.

There’s also a sense that the show’s content became a genuine sore spot inside the room. An episode where the Tkachuks criticized Toronto players for not publicly backing Auston Matthews is being pointed to as a particularly uncomfortable moment, given what came next for Brady’s own relationship with his Ottawa teammates over the two seasons that followed. Brady got into a few fights at the start of games, just to make it seem like he was willing to uplift his team. But, when push came to shove, and defending his teammates was required, Brady’s motivations were questioned.

A podcast with active players is always a risk. Some wonder if the Senators organization allowed it to appease their then-captain. Rather than pushing back, they allowed Brady to put himself in a spot where he was bound to say something controversial.

If teammates had genuinely known for years that their captain didn’t see his future in Ottawa, the surprise wasn’t that Tkachuk eventually left — it’s that the front office didn’t seem to act on it sooner.

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