The story goes that King Sisyphus cheated death so often he had to be punished by the gods in the cruelest way possible.
He was forced to push a giant boulder up a steep hill, only to watch it roll back down again.
We were reminded again this week that the Ottawa Senators are the Sisyphus of the National Hockey League. Always pushing a rock up a mountain, getting tantalizingly close, before it rolls back down and the task begins anew.
General manager Steve Staios emphasized this week that his team is going to keep pushing — “I don’t intend on taking a step back with this group,” he said — even after his captain, Brady Tkachuk, demanded a trade to Florida, where he can reunite with brother Matthew and wreak havoc with the Panthers.
How badly did Staios want to get rid of Tkachuk, whose distracting and sometimes listless persona was dragging the team down? The GM didn’t even get a player back in the deal with Florida, instead forced to plug a couple of gaping holes with draft capital and free-agent cap space.
He wasted no time in moving his best chip, the ninth overall pick acquired in the Tkachuk deal, to San Jose for dynamic young Swedish forward William Eklund, Finnish winger Kasper Halttunen and college forward prospect Brandon Svoboda.
It’s an excellent start. With a lot more work to do.
Anyone around this franchise forever knows it’s always been this way. A relentless struggle, yet with someone like Staios willing to confront the impossible and keep striving.
In the late 1980s, the Senators faced long odds to even get a team. Hamilton seemed the obvious bet. But the plucky Sens won out, essentially because they didn’t balk at any ask from the NHL.
In the beginning, they were merely the second-best-known Senators in the nation’s capital. Eventually, the title of ‘Senator’ was shared by the aging crew in the Red Chamber with the young players in the red sweaters.
Hurdles remained, everywhere in this government town.
The ownership group scrambled to pay the franchise fee and was then told the team would have to pay for its own highway interchange, too.
Founding owner Bruce Firestone first looked to build a rink near LeBreton Flats and was told by the National Capital Commission chair, basically, “over my dead body.” Sure enough, with Jean Pigott watching from heaven, the Senators are today inching toward a new arena and other amenities on that same LeBreton Flats property. “Flats” or not, there remains more pushing up a proverbial hill.
Rejected closer to downtown, Firestone opted for Kanata, but first the Senators had to prove that this section of the Carp River — a ditch, really — was not navigable. A Canadian coast guard official actually waded through the trickle of water to declare that no one would be piloting a ship through here anytime soon.
From scratch, the Senators slowly built a fan base. Geographically pinned between a rock and a hard place — Montreal and Toronto — the Sens faced a backlash by telling Leafs fans in the Ottawa Valley that Toronto games would be blacked out to protect Ottawa broadcasts.
Fans who grew up in a six-team NHL would not easily shake their allegiance to the Habs and Leafs.
Only when their children grew up with an NHL team in their backyard did the Senators gain traction. Today, it’s the millennials and Gen Zers who fire up the passions. Social media is their forum. They buy the gear and suffer the indignities of another obsolete jersey.
One irate fan set a Tkachuk jersey on fire and displayed it on video, a bit hardcore for our taste.
Regardless, it’s so long No. 7, which once belonged to Tkachuk and to Kyle Turris before him.
Hardship is a given here.
Over the past 34 years, there have been ownership changes and bankruptcies. Loans on top of loans.
Daniel Alfredsson — now, there was a captain — once stood in a downtown snowstorm and encouraged fans to step up to support the team, lest we lose it.
Eugene Melnyk, for all his documented shortcomings, bought the franchise in 2003 because he wanted to see it remain in Canada, under Canadian ownership.
Melnyk’s successor, Michael Andlauer, put his resources on the line and got behind the rock, vowing to get to the top. The kind of hands-on owner who thinks a draft combine is a good time, Andlauer believed he’d inherited a captain capable of leading a young core that included Jake Sanderson and Tim Stutzle, but something perceptibly changed this season. The Senators didn’t get the best of Tkachuk, only Team USA did.
After seven good seasons and one odd one, Tkachuk laid a playoff egg before succumbing to an American tide, asking out and putting the Senators and their fans in a hole they recognize.
Oh, the players this team has lost.
From Marian Hossa to Martin Havlat.
From Zdeno Chara to Alfredsson himself — briefly, driven away by Melnyk’s cold shoulder.
From Dany Heatley to Jason Spezza.
From J.G. Pageau to Mark Stone.
From Mika Zibanejad to Erik Karlsson.
None of these departures brought the world to an end, although many sparked a discussion that began with ‘what if?’
Sometimes the Senators did their best work with hands tied.
More or less forced to get rid of Alexei Yashin, then-GM Marshall Johnston acquired a raw young Islanders defenceman named Zdeno Chara, forward Bill Muckalt and the second overall pick in the draft, which he used to select Spezza, a future captain and No. 1 centre.
Although Staios isn’t likely to match that singular magic, he still has many cards to play.
He will use the resources he has to try to build a team the city can be proud to call its own. Full of players who actually want to be here.
The air already feels clearer with Tkachuk gone.
Staios won’t quit, anymore than Sisyphus did.
The difference is that Steady Steve hasn’t been told that the boulder must always fall back down.