Taking back CTC: Senators fed up with Leafs, Habs fans invasions
Rivalry games overrun with away fans have reignited a debate the Ottawa Senators thought was behind them. Now, they're taking action.
Callum Fraser, Postmedia
Published Mar 20, 2026
“If you could do anything about the Leaf fans at the games, that would be great.”
According to Ottawa Senators president Cyril Leeder, that was one of the very first messages captain Brady Tkachuk had for new owner Michael Andlauer after he bought the franchise in 2023.
Three seasons later, the team has improved dramatically but that long-simmering issue remains. It’s a regular topic on talk radio and fan forums, and just days ago, Shane Pinto‘s father briefly called out fans on social media.
Now, in the wake of two jarring home losses to the Montreal Canadiens in front of overwhelmingly pro-Habs crowds, and with the Toronto Maple Leafs marching into town on Saturday, the Senators are desperate to take back their barn for good.
The organization says it will create a database of verified diehards this summer, encouraging them to answer the call for rivalry games. Renovations for a Sens-fans-only section in the upper bowl, with room to grow, could be completed by next season.
“From my vantage point,” Leeder said in a 1-on-1 interview with the Ottawa Citizen, “I don’t need any more pressure or more people speaking out that we need to do something. Because we know that we’ve got to deal with this.”
On Jan. 17, the largest contingent of away fans in recent memory — and maybe ever, according to several fans the Citizen spoke to — stormed Canadian Tire Centre for Habs vs. Sens, a dramatic 6-5 overtime loss for the home team.
Generous estimates had the sellout crowd of 18,020 at 80:20 Canadiens fans to Senators fans.
And if Ottawa defenceman Jake Sanderson hadn’t uncharacteristically criticized the performance of goaltender Leevi Merilainen post-game, his comments on the turnout would’ve drawn much more attention.
“We’re used to it, playing an away game at home,” said Sanderson, looking totally defeated. “It happens quite often.”
No matter how stoic the elite athlete, hearing thunderous boos in your home arena during the starting lineup announcements can penetrate the psyche.
Professional hockey in Ottawa is, at its core, community. Sandwiched between two historic hockey cities, there is a shared desire between fan and player to step out of the dark shadows cast by their bitter adversaries.
What the team felt that regrettable evening was abandonment.
And the marketing department’s postmortem produced an astounding revelation.
“The game in January,” Leeder recalled, “which was probably the most opposing fans we’ve ever had at a game, there was over 6,500 season seat tickets transferred, which is a high number. We can’t really verify who got them, whether they’re Sens fans or Canadiens fans, but the general assumption is if you’re transferring for that game, they probably went to a Canadiens fan.”
Leeder and company, noticing on the calendar three looming home games against the Habs and Maple Leafs staring daggers back at them, knew they had to act.
Urging that “it doesn’t have to be this way,” the Senators sent an e-mail to season seat members on Feb. 19, offering additional non-transferable mobile tickets to upcoming rivalry games at an “exclusive price.”
Essentially: Promise to bring some pro-Sens friends and family, and we’ll give you an honest discount.
By the time the Habs rolled in for a rematch three weeks later, the initiative hadn’t made much of an impact.
“(We sold) hundreds of tickets, not thousands of tickets,” Leeder admitted.
On March 11, with Canadiens fans making up three-quarters of the arena’s attendance — a minor improvement upon the original sin — frustration amongst the faithful hit a fever pitch.
Aidan Proulx, in his third year as a season seat member, took the Senators up on their offer, but upon arrival realized that few others obliged.
“I do feel like in the last few years it’s gotten increasingly worse,” Proulx said. “I don’t remember it being to this extent, where it just feels like a complete takeover. It used to be more of a fight.”
Adding to the embarrassment of the 3-2 defeat that night, Habs fans, confident as ever in their new home away from home, started doing the wave with six minutes remaining in the third period. Not too long after, a boastful chorus of “Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé!” filled the arena.
Moments after the game, Frank Pinto, the father of the team’s third-line centre, wrote on X, “Sens Nation needs to be better to support our boys. Unacceptable home support. #StillBelieve” (The post was deleted by the following morning.)
On local sports talk radio station TSN 1200’s post-game show, half of texts and calls were focused on the turnout, or lack thereof, with one seething caller, Owen, stating, “I hope Sens fans can maybe have a bit of a spine and not sell their tickets every single time they can make a buck.”
Online, popular Locked On Senators commentator Cam, who goes by Lalime’s Martian on social media, took dead aim at Sens fans who did show up. Co-hosting the podcast’s ‘post-cast,’ he claimed that Canadiens fans “dominated” the home team’s “soft” supporters.
“You don’t have to be disrespectful, it’s friendly banter, but get in their ears,” pleaded Cam, who attended both Habs games this season at CTC. “Make them feel like they’re the (jerk) for yelling and screaming and cheering for their team. I had ladies screaming about Brendan Gallagher right in front of me, like, ‘Come on Gally! Go Gally, go!’ And I’m like, ‘You’re washed up, Gallagher!’ Do stuff like that to make them realize that they’re not just here saying whatever they want. They shouldn’t be able to do what they want in our house, it’s such horse… Honestly, it drives me bananas.”
Forty-eight hours later, Cam spoke with the Citizen about his fiery rant.
“Just with it being further down the stretch here,” he said, “these games have a little more of an important feeling, this one in particular. I think what was in my head was just a little bit of anger. I take my fandom pretty seriously, as you know, right? So, when I’m in the building, I’m giving it my all as a fan. And I think a lot of our fans just left a little bit on the table there.”
Other diehards and season ticket holders direct most of the blame towards the organization for not taking action sooner, and raising ticket prices to the moon for rivalry games (nosebleeds are a minimum $120.80 for the remaining two home contests against the Maple Leafs).
Nick Spence, a full-season seat member, was six-years-old when Ottawa was awarded an NHL franchise.
“I’m the first generation of kids that were like, ‘OK, my parents were Bruins fans and Leafs fans and whatever, now I’m a Sens fan,'” he said. “But our generation doesn’t have as much disposable income, right? So, you’re still looking at a fairly old demographic going to hockey games, I would think, without having any data on it. … So, even if there are a lot of Sens fans, they maybe don’t have the cash to go to a game, certainly not a Habs or Leafs game.”
TSN 1200 host AJ Jakubec, who was on air for that rage-filled post-game show last week, believes there’s no easy solution.
“If you put a Major League Baseball team in Hartford, it’s probably the only comparable to what Ottawa deals with here,” he said. “Like, imagine all of these people in Connecticut that have had these long-time ties to either the Yankees or Red Sox, which are two of the most important but also biggest fan bases in the MLB, and say, ‘Well, cheer for Hartford now.’
“It’s 30 years later, and from that perspective, I think Ottawa’s carved out a pretty good fan base here, but there’s still work to do.”
That work, Leeder says, began in January after the first infamous Habs game.
The Senators organized focus groups and met with influencers, presenting proposals and asking for ideas.
The aforementioned e-mail to season ticket members was sent out in February, and the organization also released “Playoff Push Packs” on Monday, offering two sets of three-games for a discounted price, each of which includes a Toronto game.
Those are the quick fixes. There are many more audacious initiatives on the horizon.
One of them will be called ‘Verified Sens Fans,’ a database of confirmed supporters that the organization can market to.
It’s a strategy inspired by the enormous effort from super fan and long-time season ticket holder Kevin Lee in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
During the first-round series against Toronto, Lee took on what he called a “part-time job” trying to keep CTC red. The Senators sold him 50 discounted tickets for each of the three home playoff games, and he found Sens fans to sell and transfer tickets to at no markup.
“My DMs were a mess,” Lee recalled.
News of the agreement spread quickly, and the Senators connected with additional season ticket holders to facilitate more exchanges.
For Game 3, Toronto fans arguably outnumbered Ottawa fans, but by Game 4, the home crowd had taken back its barn.
And Game 6? Red as a tomato.
The Sens will begin verifying friendly fans this offseason.
“We can’t rely on the Kevins of the world to do this for us,” Leeder said. “We’ve got to do some of that in advance. It won’t be perfect, but if we get it 95 percent right and you’ve got a database, say, in three years of 5,000 people, well, that really will be the difference, if you can get 4,000 tickets to your own fans for those games.”
Said Lee: “We have to create a path, otherwise Leafs fans will just grab them, even if the Sens set ticket prices really low and open them up to the public right away.”
Leeder acknowledges that long-term success here will come with a significantly larger season ticket base — hopefully 13,000-14,000 members “three years down the road” — and those fans actually wanting to go to rivalry games.
In the meantime, ambitious measures must be taken.
Have you ever been to a European football game?
The vast majority of stadiums overseas have designated sections for visiting team supporters, fully segregated in order to avoid conflict between uber-passionate fans.
Of course, any attempt to cram every Leafs and Habs fan into a section or two would prove futile, but perhaps the inverse endeavour could suffice.
In the NBA, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Intuit Dome features a 51-row, 5,000-seat section behind the visiting team’s basket designated solely for home fans. The Wall, aptly named for its steep face, is for Clippers fans only; if you wear away colours, you will be kicked out.
That sort of scale may be a pipe dream for the Senators, but they intend to begin somewhere, and soon.
“It would be ideal to start with a section and then, if that takes off, just keep making it bigger over time,” Leeder said. “And we’re looking at maybe creating some kind of section in the upper bowl next year, renovating and really doing something right. You know, having a requirement that you can only wear Senators gear in that section. We are looking at that, for sure, for next season.”
It’s an idea the Citizen discussed with Sens fans even before Leeder revealed the team’s plans.
“You’re definitely going to get some diehard fans in there and they’re going to be loud enough that they can fight some of those (opposing) chants,” Cam said “If their job is just to be loud and be kind of rowdy and get their chants going and get the Go Sens Gos going, I mean, man, that’s one way you can combat it, where you just limit that section and condense the fandom a little bit so everybody doesn’t feel like they’re alone in the stands.
“I could help them with that if they wanted it, y’know? Using my platform, I could make sure that we get more Sens fans in there.”
Leeder admits that January’s takeover, and the uproar that ensued, caught the team off guard.
“We felt, coming out of the playoffs last year that we really had a fix,” he said. “And we had the fan base kind of say, ‘OK, look, we understand, we want to go to those games and it’s incumbent on us to buy the tickets and show up.’ And that is true, but we’ve got to do our part as well.
“Have we done enough? I guess you can always second-guess yourself. We’re doing a lot of that obviously right now.”
https://ottawasun.com/feature/leafs-cana...rs-fed-up-with-leafs-habs-fans-invasions
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