We Are the Senators

Lore & Background

The story of the Ottawa Senators is, at its root, a story about a small city refusing to let go of its hockey. The original Ottawa Hockey Club was founded in 1883, drawing players from the political and social establishment of the young capital. Within a few years they were simply the Ottawa Senators, a name that welded the team to the identity of the city — the seat of the Senate, the centre of a young nation. (The 'Ottawa Silver Seven' name was adopted later, in 1903.) When the NHL was formed in 1917, Ottawa was one of the four founding franchises, and the early decades produced a string of Stanley Cup runs and a rivalry with Montreal that still echoes in the stands today. However, the modern Ottawa Senators franchise, founded in 1990 and beginning play in 1992, is a separate entity from that original club.

Then came the long silence. The original franchise left the NHL in 1934, and NHL hockey did not return to Ottawa until the 1992–93 season. For a generation, Ottawa's hockey identity lived in memory, in old photographs, in the stories grandfathers told at kitchen tables. The return was almost miraculous: the new Senators reached the Stanley Cup Finals in 2007, a gritty, underdog run that felt like the city finally exhaling after decades of holding its breath — though they fell to the Anaheim Ducks.

"We Are the Senators" is not a slogan printed on a banner. It is a generational inheritance. The fans who filled the Civic Centre in the 1990s, the ones who sat through the empty years, the ones who bought season tickets in 1992 on faith — they are the same community that now packs the Canadian Tire Centre. The chant is a lineage claim: we were here when the team was gone, we were here when it came back, and the ice belongs to us.

Reader's Guide

The Canadian Tire Centre, nestled in the suburb of Kanata just west of downtown Ottawa, is a modern NHL arena that opened in 1996 to replace the beloved Ottawa Civic Centre. The building seats roughly 19,000, with a steep lower bowl that puts fans close to the ice and an upper deck that creates a natural amphitheatre effect. The ice-level seating, the end-zone bars, and the concourse-level viewing areas give the venue a dense, intimate feel despite its size. The red-and-black colour scheme is woven throughout: the seating, the signage, the team crest projected on the ice at warmups.

Game-day rituals are deeply embedded. Before the first faceoff, the crowd swells into the "We Are the Senators" chant, a call-and-response that builds in waves from the lower bowl upward. Goal celebrations are explosive and unscripted — the entire end zone erupts, strangers hug, and the PA announcer's voice is nearly swallowed by the roar. The team's connection to Ottawa's civic identity is constant: the arena sits in a city where government, history, and hockey are inseparable, and the Senators are woven into the fabric of local life the way few teams are in their markets. Season tickets are passed down through families, the team's colours appear on local storefronts year-round, and the rivalry with Montreal is treated less as a sporting event and more as a civic obligation. The Senators are not a product Ottawa consumes; they are a part of what Ottawa is.