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The Ottawa Senators are a lie.
Okay, let me back up for a second. In February last year, I took a bus trip to Ottawa. Ottawa is a cute city for what it is (government, government, and more government.). The Rideau Canal is beautiful. The copper-topped parliament buildings are striking in the winter against the snow and grey skies, and beavertails at the market are delicious and well worth a trip there.
There is also no NHL hockey team in the city of Ottawa proper.
Ottawa is basically the Phoenix Coyotes of Canada: Yes, let's name this team after a city 45 minutes away from where we actually play and make it RIDICULOUSLY difficult to get there without a car! Seems legit. This is the equivalent to the Bruins putting their arena in Framingham, then demolishing the commuter rail and only putting a bus to the arena that runs once an hour. How stupid. Should call them the Kanata Senators, really.
And look: it'd all be okay, except there is literally NOTHING to do in Kanata. And, by the time you get back to Ottawa, all the bars are about to close. You have to go to freaking Quebec if you want to really go out after the game. Which, granted, is only a short walk over a bridge to the alcohol-filled paradise that is Hull/Gatineau, but still. The arena is so far away that you have to go to a different PROVINCE to go out after. That in and of itself is hate-worthy. Why don't you just move them to Hull and re-name them the Senateurs?
Location aside, the Ottawa Senators are pretty stupid on their own, and their few fans are a bunch of mouthbreathing hosers, most of whom actually want to make Scumbag Chris Neil captain. What? How is that even a thing?
Chris Neil should have been captain of the @Senators
— Taylor (@TaylorEggemann) September 20, 2013
Gross. In case you need your memory jogged, Chris Neil most recently broke Chris Kelly's tibia with a vicious knee on knee hit last March. He regularly fights Milan Lucic and is really just an all around jerkbag.
The Senators, being a relatively new team, admittedly are having a hard time carving out an identity in a sea of existing hockey fans. They can't fill up their own arena and so have to regularly deal with floods of Maple Leafs, Habs, and many other team's fans in Kanata. To which I say: suck it up and deal with it. There are plenty of places in North America that want hockey teams, and you, a city in CANADA, which is supposed to be the hockey mecca of the world, can't fill an arena with fans of the arena's own team? Get the fuck out.
Other reasons the Sens are hate-worthy: they had the audacity to actually lose a playoff game to the Canadiens last year, their third "SNES" jerseys are atrocious, I don't want to have to hate Bobby Ryan, they have too many Americans and I am jealous of this, they're formerly of the Northeast Division and so hate is automatic, and Tim Thomas used to own them (seriously he was like 10-1-1 against them all time or something ridiculous) and I don't want to have to get used to not getting to guarantee wins against Ottawa anymore. Fuck that.
In conclusion, with the recently-departed Daniel Alfredsson saga having occurred, I call on Detroit to do this: whenever the Red Wings play in Ottawa, please PLEASE travel there and cheer for Alfie at 11 minutes like Sens fans used to do. It will be hilarious. Which leads to my last question: traveling to Kanata sucks, but since they changed the arena's name from the Scotiabank Place to Canadian Tire Centre, can we now pay for tickets with Canadian Tire money?