If you want to understand the definition of the word ‘conflicted’, you should have been privy to our conversations around our social media strategy leading up to Sunday’s Olympic gold medal game.
We fully understood that a Team USA victory would trigger a lot of reaction for the vast majority of our fanbase, who were clearly pulling for Team Canada on Sunday morning. But with two of our superstar players – Brady Tkachuk and Jake Sanderson – playing for the Americans, we couldn’t exactly ignore a Team USA victory on social media.
If we avoided saying congratulations to Team USA on their victory, we would be criticized for showing a lack of respect towards our own superstars. Brady and Jake just achieved a lifelong dream on the international stage and if we ignored that, it would seem very shortsighted and petty.
But if we did acknowledge the American victory with a congratulations post, it would be construed as rubbing salt in the wounds of our own fanbase, who were rabidly pulling for a Canadian gold medal.
It was a no-win situation for us, but that’s the world of social media in a nutshell. Post a cute picture of a puppy and someone will inevitably respond, “But why do you hate cats?”
So we navigated this the best way we thought possible, which was to acknowledge the accomplishments of all five members of our team who were involved in the gold medal game. In addition to Tkachuk and Sanderson, we had our video coach Mike King working on Team USA’s staff. And our head athletic trainer Dom Nicoletta and our equipment manager John Forget were behind the bench for Team Canada. (We also posted to congratulate Nik Matinpalo on his bronze medal on Saturday).
We put out a single post, congratulating our five Olympians involved in Sunday’s finale. We waited for 48 minutes after the Jack Hughes goal to send our post. There is no perfect formula in situations like this, but we felt like something about an hour after the game was appropriate. (The Winnipeg Jets posted congratulations to their gold medal winners just seven minutes after the Hughes goal – but that was largely soak in the universal praise for their goalie Connor Hellebuyck, who stood on his head).
Predictably – especially on Instagram – we had a wide number of fans telling us to “delete” the post.
But I promise you if we hadn’t posted it, we would have seen an equal number of fans asking, “Why didn’t you post for Brady and Jake?”
If the American gold medal hadn’t come at the expense of Canada, I think a lot of our fans would have a different feeling today. An American win over Finland for the gold medal, for example, would not have elicited so much reaction.
(And for those of you complaining about Brady’s comments about “hatred” towards Canada, I highly encourage you to actually watch his interview clip here with ESPN’s Emily Kaplan – instead of getting riled up from a social media post that may have appeared in your feed. Context really matters in cases like this one).
If you have any thoughts on how we handled the social media posts related to the gold medal game, please send them to us at [email protected]
Trivia time: The Senators played very well down the stretch last season after the 4 Nations break, posting a 16-7-3 record in the final 26 games of the regular season to clinch a playoff spot. Which two Senators players tied for the team in goals after 4 Nations break last year? (Hint: Both these players scored 10 goals for Ottawa).
Answer at the bottom of this column.
Our strategy on trying to fill rivalry games with Sens fans at the Canadian Tire Centre
It’s been just over a month since emotions came spilling out of Canadian Tire Centre during our January 17 home game against the Montreal Canadiens.
Disappointing overtime loss aside, what angered a lot of our fan base that night was the manner in which Montreal fans invaded our building. Best case scenario, it was a 70-30 split in favour of Habs fans, but I might be overly generous in my estimation. It might have been closer to 80-20 – or worse.
We received a lot of feedback from that night and we took it to heart.
We set up a focus group with a handful of our season seat members and our executive team. We did a small roundtable with a handful of media members.
Our key message?
Nobody was happy with the lack of Ottawa fans in our building that night. And we’re going to go back to the drawing board to fix this issue.
For starters, we’d really like to push back against the narrative that we price the rivalry games so that it incentivizes Montreal and Toronto fans to buy the tickets. If we put them at the same price as a Columbus or Anaheim game, fans would scoop up the tickets and simply flip them to Montreal and Toronto fans at an inflated cost – taking all the revenue out of our hands.
We use a dynamic ticketing model – similar to airline prices – where the games will fluctuate based on demand. The Montreal and Toronto games see an increased demand, so the prices go up accordingly.
In an ideal world, our fans would scoop up those tickets and while there would still a sizeable number of Montreal and Toronto fans in attendance, the split would be closer to 50-50 or something in that neighbourhood.
So to help tackle our upcoming home games against rivals like Montreal, Toronto and Pittsburgh, we sent a letter to our season seat members last week with a special offer.
We are offering our season seat members the chance to buy additional tickets to those games – at a discounted rate – on the condition they are put in the hands of Senators fans. These tickets cannot be transferred or resold.
We used a similar method to pack the Canadian Tire Centre with Ottawa fans for the three playoff games against Toronto last spring. Our fans answered the call in April and we’re hoping you’ll do it again here.
The situation we face in Ottawa is not necessarily unique. The Sabres deal with an influx of Toronto fans every time the Maple Leafs pay a visit down the QEW. Western Canadian arenas are swarmed with Habs and Leafs fans every year. And ask the Seattle Mariners how much they enjoy visits from the Toronto Blue Jays.
But just because this happens in other markets and other sports, doesn’t mean we have to just roll over an accept it.
If you’ve got ideas how we can ensure Canadian Tire Centre is filled with Senators fans for these rivalry games, shoot us an email to [email protected].
We’re really open to any and all ideas in this space.
Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.
Our staff writer Andrew Wilimek posed a simple question to our players last week: Other than hockey or golf, what sport do you excel at? Some fun answers here.
It’s the 20-year anniversary of the 2005-06 Senators team – arguably the most talented edition in franchise history. That season was de-railed when Dominik Hasek went down with an adductor injury at the 2006 Olympics in Italy. Huge cap tip to Graeme Nichols for not only tracking down Hasek – but a handful of other notable figures for an oral history of the 2005-06 Senators.
Thomas Chabot joined TSN 1200 last week and chatted about his Olympic break – which included a golf win over Shane Pinto – with JR and Lloydie.
Random thoughts:
After the 4 Nations break last year, our record stood at 29-23-4 after 56 games – good for a .554 points percentage. As we come out of the Olympic break this year, we’re sitting with a 28-22-7 record after 57 games – with a .553 points percentage. Essentially a mirror image of where we stood a year ago.
Now the difference is the Eastern Conference – particularly the Atlantic Division – has vastly improved year-over-year. The cutoff for the playoffs isn’t going to be a 91 points like it was last year for the final wild card spot. It’s likely going to be closer to 100 points.
The good news? If we replicate what we did down the stretch last year – when we went 16-7-3 – we’ll get to 97 points again.
We’ve got 25 games remaining and if we go 17-8-0 – that will put us at 97 points. 18-7-0 would give us 99 points. Contrary to what you might think, we don’t need a Hamburglar, miracle-style run here. We just need to replicate last year’s success down the stretch and get a little bit of help on the out-of-town scoreboard.
Trivia answer: Drake Batherson and Shane Pinto each scored 10 goals after the 4 Nations break to tie for the lead in that category amongst Sens players.