Insider Explains What Really Drove Brady Tkachuk Out Of Ottawa

Wednesday, August 12, 2026 ,
Brady Tkachuk's exit from Ottawa this offseason didn't come out of nowhere, but even those closest to him say they didn't see it coming.

Speaking on DLLS Stars, the show's host spoke on the strangeness of it. "This team went through, I was just saying this, it almost went through like what the Buffalo Sabres went through, except for less, because the playoff drought wasn't 14 years... And now you have Brady Tkachuk gone. What happened? Why did they feel, other, obviously, Tkachuk said he was not intending to sign an extension in two years. But how did this sort of nuclear explosion go off for Senators?"

Senators' reporter Julien McKenzie's answer, who was a guest on the show, was that nobody has the full picture yet, including people close to the situation.

The Locker Room Pressure Nobody Expected

"I feel as if there are still answers to be discovered as to what led to Brady Tkachuk deciding he didn't want to stay with the team anymore," McKenzie said. "I've seen different podcasts in the last couple of days where, whether it's from Steve Staios, and I know he talked to us too in the media as well about it. But other players have spoken to saying how surprised they were about the fact that Brady Tkachuk got himself to that point."

McKenzie then laid out a theory based on Staios' own comments suggesting the front office had quietly anticipated this for over a year. 

"I'm really just guessing at this point with how I describe it, but I think it's a combination of spending a lot of time in one city. Maybe not achieving the same amount of success as your brother, who plays in the Canadian market, and then he decides he wants to leave, and then he finds instant success in Florida," McKenzie said. "I think it's him looking at his contract situation. I think it's this player empowerment era that we seem to be on the cusp of, if not firmly in already, where a player decided he wanted to take control of his career and find a way to get to the city he really wanted to play in."

What Tkachuk Himself Has Said

McKenzie pointed out a very specific, visible contrast between the brothers' lives off the ice. "You guys have seen those live streams of him at the Elbow Room with the gold medal, hanging out, just doing whatever he wants," McKenzie said of Matthew. "If Brady Tkachuk's in Ottawa, he can't breathe without somebody looking at him and be like, 'Hey, what's up?'"

He also raised the international hockey fallout as potentially another factor. "I think you have to account for the politics stuff and all of this too. Playing for Team USA and the reception to him after the gold medal game and all that," McKenzie said. "We can't discount the fact that there was all that coming after the Four Nations tournament too. I have a hard time thinking that didn't play a role into some of that."

"I definitely think it's a combination of all these different factors that I brought up that may have led towards him wanting out, and now it's on the Ottawa Senators to move on because it seems like Brady Tkachuk has already taken steps to move on from his previous employer too," McKenzie said.

Tkachuk spent the first eight seasons of his career in Ottawa after getting drafted 4th overall by the Senators in the 2018 NHL Entry Draft.

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