Ottawa and Carolina opened the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a matinee in Raleigh, N.C., on Sunday, and the Senators were on the ice just after 3 p.m. for Game 1. For Ottawa, it was the start of another test against a team that has spent years living in this moment.
Brady Tkachuk said the Senators had already checked one box and now had a chance to set up another. He said his group was focused on nothing beyond Game 1 and the first TV timeout, a short target that fit a team trying to keep the afternoon from getting away from it early.
That urgency came from last spring. Ottawa was looking for a better start than last year’s postseason, when it dropped the first three games of Round 1 to Toronto before pushing the series to six games. The Senators entered that matchup with 12 regulars getting their first taste of playoff hockey, and even now last year’s six games sat on almost every player’s resume. This time, the group arrived with more knowledge of what the first round can demand.
Thomas Chabot said that experience changed the way Ottawa could prepare. He pointed to the first-round series against Toronto as proof that the Senators know more about what to expect than they did a year ago. Tim Stützle made the same case in a different way, saying Ottawa gave up four power play goals in the first game last year and took too many penalties. Carolina, he said, has a strong power play, which meant the Senators had to stay out of the box and trust a penalty kill he said has gotten tremendously better.
There was also a practical benefit in the final stretch before the opener. Stützle, Tkachuk, Chabot and Jake Sanderson were out of the lineup for the final two regular season games, and Stützle said the rest helped him before the postseason began. He called the playoffs a new season by itself, and Ottawa will need that reset quickly against a Carolina club carrying the NHL’s third-longest active playoff streak.
The matchup gives the Senators a fast answer to the question that has followed them from last year into this one: whether experience alone can make a team sharper, or whether Ottawa will need to prove it can turn those lessons into a cleaner start when the games matter most.