Andre Burakovsky has already seen what championship hockey looks like up close, and the Senators are hoping that matters.
Ottawa’s newest addition arrived last month in a deal that sent a sixth-round pick the other way, giving Steve Staios another player with Stanley Cup rings on his résumé. Burakovsky has won twice, first with the Washington Capitals in 2018 and then with the Colorado Avalanche in 2022, and this week he explained what separated those teams from everyone else.
“First of all, the camaraderie in those two teams was exceptional,” Burakovsky said in an interview with Sens host Jackson Starr.“We were such a tight group. Everyone cared for each other, and obviously, everyone competed every day.”
That sense of togetherness was only part of it. Burakovsky said Colorado in particular had a practice environment that matched the intensity of the games.
“You're teammates, but on the ice, you go to war with each other,” Burakovsky said. “You're playing with the best players in the world, and you want to compete against the best players in the world, and you can do that both in practice and games.
“So that was something that stood out to me, and that everyone just came ready for every single game.”
Those are the kinds of details that naturally catch Ottawa’s attention. Staios has made a habit of adding players who know what it takes to win, signing David Perron, Nick Cousins and Michael Amadio in the summer of 2024, then bringing in Lars Eller and Warren Foegele last year. After moving on from Perron and Eller over the past four months, he added Burakovsky to replenish some of that championship pedigree.
The comments also land in a moment when the Senators are still sorting through what changed around the team over the past season. For years, the group’s camaraderie stood out even during the rebuild, with a young core that was energetic and easy to rally around. Brady Tkachuk was the player who pulled everyone together and pushed the group into the fight.
But something shifted during the last year, and Staios acknowledged as much on the day Tkachuk was traded.
“It became clear as the season went on this year that maybe something was amiss, and that had changed,” Staios. “But up until that point, I would have loved to have seen it through with Brady.”
Head coach Travis Green spent much of the season stressing the importance of blocking out the outside noise, and the players responded well enough to surge into the playoff race. Still, Burakovsky’s description of championship teams points to another layer: not just tuning out distractions, but building a daily standard where practice itself feels like a battle.
Green already runs a demanding practice, and mistakes are not exactly met with a shrug. The question is how far that edge can be pushed without crossing into the kind of overload that leads to injuries or drains energy over the length of a long season.
Burakovsky is not walking into Ottawa to redesign the culture on his own. But players who have lived through championship runs tend to notice the small things that separate the winners from everyone else, and Burakovsky has done it twice. That makes his view worth hearing.
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The tension around his return goes beyond the usual bad blood that comes with a star moving on. Ottawa supporters have had plenty of time to sit with the way the situation played out publicly, and with Tkachuk now set to come back in another sweater, the building should make its feelings known early and often. [Read more 🡒]
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Michael Bunting has surfaced as the kind of free-agent fit that makes sense for that job. He brings a physical edge, but he has also shown he can finish, which is why a down season does not necessarily close the book on him as a bounce-back option. For Ottawa, the appeal is obvious: if the Senators are serious about staying hard to play against after the Tkachuk trade, they may need a forward who can do more than just fill a roster spot. [Read more 🡒]