With a little over a month until the Ottawa Senators’ first home game of the upcoming NHL season, the team hosted media, fan channels and influencers Thursday for a season preview. The biggest in-house change fans will see is a new 300-level fan deck designed for socialization during games. “It’s important because that’s where the game and sports are trending,” said team president and CEO Cyril Leeder. “People want to have those social spaces where they can do two things; they can watch the game, but they can also interact with their friends or with their family and have that social interaction.” The new fan deck is available to any ticket holder on game days. The new social space comes at a cost of 850 seats, reduced capacity at the Canadian Tire Centre to 17,010. Sens super fan Kevin Lee says he is happy the team isn’t waiting until a new arena arrives at Lebreton Flats to improve the fan experience. “I think it’s great to see that, even though we all know we’re chasing that downtown arena, that the team is still investing in the CTC and trying to make it more of a social experience and get more young fans into the building,” says Lee. “It’s really cool to see like how the building’s evolving still.” All 200-level seats were also replaced and upgraded. The Sens will put forth a new organizational slogan this season, “The Hill We Choose”. Peter Shier, the team’s vice president of marketing, says ‘The Hill’ references Parliament Hill and the Gatineau Hills, the ‘We’ is an invitation for everyone to be part of Sens Army, and the ‘Choose’ aspect of the slogan represents a commitment to cheer on Ottawa’s hometown team rather than nearby, rival NHL teams like Toronto or Montreal. Tickets for the first half of the new season go on sale after Labour Day, with the organization launching a new Verified Sens Fan program, designed to ensure Senators fans are the majority in attendance when rival teams visit Ottawa, and that tickets aren’t going to fans of opposing teams. “The goal for us is how do we get our most passionate fans at these games,” said Brendan Duvall, vice president of Ticket Sale and Service. “There’s ways for us to verify based on your buying history with us. The tickets are not going to be able to be transferred, they’re not going to be able to be resold.” “We always know that the rivalry nights are tough, with a lot of visiting fans coming in and taking over the building,” says Lee, a season ticket holder. “It’ll be interesting to see if the Sens can use that program to help get Sens fans into the seats and have the home crowd really take over.” Duvall says the games early in the season drawing big ticket sales include the Oct. 8 home opener versus Philadelphia, the Oct. 21 match versus Florida, when Brady Tkachuk returns to Ottawa for the first time, and Oct. 22 against the San Jose Sharks, where young phenom Macklin Celebrini will feature. The team also unveiled a host of new food and drink options for fans, including a signature Beavertail-style smoked meat sandwich called the True North Sandwich-Eh! “You have this long fried dough, but then we throw maple mustard on top of it, Swiss cheese, then we have our freshly made smoked meat that we do in-house, and then we add peameal bacon, then we have shredded pickles,” described Aramark executive chef John Mitchell. And to get to games, the Sens are starting a new shuttle service that will bus fans to and from the CTC for all 42 home games from various pub locations throughout Ottawa and Gatineau.
