When Jason Spezza was named captain of the Ottawa Senators for the 2013–14 season, not many people saw it coming, at least not yet. Spezza was coming off the shortened NHL season in which he played just five regular-season games and three playoff games due to back problems, and Daniel Alfredsson was still widely respected as the club’s captain and longtime leader.
But Spezza recovered nicely, and Alfredsson left the team in free agency that summer, signing with the Detroit Red Wings. So, Spezza became Ottawa’s new captain.
At the time, no one realized it would be such a short tenure, just one season, before Spezza asked for a trade. If the Senators had known then what they know now, they might have given the captaincy to veteran Chris Phillips, the club’s all-time leader in games played.
From The Hockey News Archive, Ryan Kennedy wrote about Spezza shortly after he made his debut as the Senators’ captain in October 2013. – SW
Oct 28, 2013
Vol. 67, issue 07
A TEAM ON HIS BACK
Jason Spezza is healthy, and his timing is impeccable. Ottawa is hungry for a deep playoff run and needs a leader in the wake of Daniel Alfredsson’s departure
BY RYAN KENNEDY
THE OTTAWA SENATORS were full of miracles last season, starting with the young squad making the playoffs during a campaign in which their best player in each zone lost most of the 48-game season to injury. Goaltender Craig Anderson missed 18 games with a sprained ankle. Defenseman Erik Karlsson missed 31 with a sliced Achilles tendon, a year after winning the Norris Trophy. And center Jason Spezza was done after five games due to surgery on a herniated disc.
Now, with franchise face Daniel Alfredsson gone, Spezza will test his back literally and metaphorically as he dons the ‘C’ for the up-and-coming Senators. Spezza has battled back issues before, having surgery in 2006, but the ordeal he went through this time pushed him to the brink.
“The first time it happened I got by with cortisone shots for a while, because it was the Torino Olympics year and I wanted to be ready,” Spezza says. “I tried cortisone again this time and got no relief whatsoever.”
The latest flare-up actually dated back to the 2012 playoffs, when the Senators lost a hard-fought seven-game series to the top-seeded New York Rangers. “It was very manageable,” he says. “I played in Switzerland during the lockout and felt good starting the season after that. But by the third game in Florida, I couldn’t sit at the dinner table. It took over my life. I almost lost full function in my right leg. It went numb.”
Unlike in 2006, there was no delaying the surgery. Spezza went under the knife and didn’t return to duty until the second round of the playoffs, when Ottawa fell to Pittsburgh in five games. From February until late May, he sat in the press box, often with Karlsson and defenseman Jared Cowen, who was also out long-term with a hip injury. “It’s nerve-wracking when you want your team to win and you can’t do anything about it,” Spezza says. “It’s not something I want to make a habit of doing. You try to keep your mind sharp. It’s good to have conversations and bounce ideas off each other. Rehabbing is tough and long and not very rewarding sometimes.”
You’d think two incredible players watching from a bird’s eye view would have been helpful for coach Paul MacLean, but he notes that since Spezza and Karlsson think and play the game at such a high level, it’s not often that useful to the average player incapable of pulling off such feats. One player who did benefit, however, was center Kyle Turris. He was playing his first full season with Ottawa after a mid-year trade with Phoenix in late 2011 and had a fit of bad luck once Spezza was on the shelf, but the veteran was there for him. “There was a stretch where I went like, 20 games without a goal,” Turris says. “He’d come down after I had hit the post that night and say, ‘Turs, don’t worry. It’s coming.’ He’d text me on the road and was always so encouraging.”
Former Ottawa Senator Mark Stone Jokes That It Wasn't Always Easy Playing On Brady Tkachuk's LineVegas Golden Knights captain Mark Stone will always have a soft spot for Ottawa. Six years after he was traded away by the Senators, Stone still spends most of his summers in the city. He has a boatload of friends here, and he’s pleased to see that the Senators—his former team—are playing so well again.
Turris and Spezza have a funny history. They met in 2008, when a teenaged Turris was invited to Canada’s camp for the World Championship in Quebec City and Halifax, and Spezza was his roommate. “I was a wide-eyed 18-year-old kid,” Turris says. “And he was a superstar. It was a lot of fun. We joke about it now.”
Fast-forward to last season and Turris was once again a new face, this time in the pros after several tumultuous seasons in Phoenix. Spezza was there for him this time, too. “He was awesome,” Turris says. “He made me feel like a part of the team right from the start. He’s such a good professional and respects everyone. So down-to-earth.”
MACLEAN HAD A LOT OF conversations about the captaincy before bestowing the honor on Spezza, particularly with GM Bryan Murray. There were certainly other options available: Chris Phillips, for instance, has been a Senator his entire 15-year career and stayed with the franchise through its recent rebuild even when he had a chance to leave for more competitive pastures. There’s also Karlsson, who, though he’s just 23, has already become an elite defenseman in the NHL and would fit into the recent trend of young stars (Jamie Benn in Dallas being the latest) earning the ‘C.’ “We felt Jason was at the point where he was ready to take his career in a new direction,” MacLean says. “It’s not so much about the amount of goals or points he scores as an individual, but how much success the team has as a whole.”
He’s become so entrenched in the NHL that it’s easy to forget Spezza was a headline-grabbing phenom back in the day. As a 15-year-old, he was allowed to head to the Ontario League a year early, suiting up for Brampton and scoring more than a point per game. He was essentially John Tavares before John Tavares. Though his first pro season was split between Ottawa and AHL Binghamton, it wasn’t long before Spezza was one of the most dangerous players in the NHL. “He came into the league highly touted and now he’s in a space where his responsibilities to the younger players have grown,” MacLean says. “He can now pass on what he has learned from the veterans before him.”
One of those veterans, of course, was Daniel Alfredsson. A Senator for 17 seasons and captain for 13, he had become virtually fused into the identity of the team. But when negotiations went bad on a new contract in the summer, ‘Alfie’ pulled up stakes for Detroit, where he believed he would have a better shot at that elusive Stanley Cup ring. In an age where nothing is secret for long, Spezza was one of the few who got the inside scoop from the man himself. “That was very stand-up of him,” Spezza says. “He wanted me to hear it from him and I’ve always respected him for that.”
The exit of Alfie actually represents one of Spezza’s first official tests as captain. It’s a given he’ll be asked about the move many times this year, especially when Detroit and Ottawa clash as new rivals in the Atlantic Division. Spezza, for his part, is unflappable on the subject. “It was talked about so much,” he says. “Since we’ve been at camp it hasn’t been discussed and it hasn’t had to be discussed. We’ve been preparing for life without him for a couple years now, we just didn’t know he’d be going to a different team.”
The irony of Alfredsson’s defection is that if anything, the scrappy Senators will be tough outs in the post-season, especially with Spezza, Karlsson and Anderson at full strength. Bobby Ryan was acquired from Anaheim, bringing an upgrade at right wing from the aging Alfredsson, plus even the young kids got experience last season thanks to the team’s first-round upset of Montreal. Spezza watched that Habs series from the press box, but loved the way his mates shut down the middle of the ice on the speedy Canadiens and applied back pressure. The Sens got smacked by Pittsburgh in the second round, but Spezza sees that as the low tide mark, not the high. “We can be a hard team to play against,” he says. “But as we saw in the Pitts-burgh series, we need to take another step. Expectations have gone up.”
And once again the clock is ticking. Spezza has been to the Cup final once and it didn’t go the way he would have liked. That happened in 2007 when the Senators were destroyed by an Anaheim Ducks machine featuring three surefire Hall of Famers (Chris Pronger, Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Selanne) and a cluster of up-and-coming stars, including Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry. “Probably the best moment and the worst moment of my career,” Spezza says. “That was as good a team as I’ve ever played on and I still didn’t win.”
Though competitors always hold out hope, Spezza knew it was over midway through Game 5, an eventual 6-2 Ducks triumph to clinch the chalice. “The third period was a blur,” he says. “I’m sure everybody felt the same way.”
Of course, most of those players are gone from Ottawa now (Phillips and Chris Neil are the only other holdovers). The current edition of the squad has just a handful of players 30 or older and Spezza’s still just 30 himself. Which in another way makes him a strategic choice for captain – despite having more than 600 NHL games under his belt, he’s no greybeard. “I’m into house music and rap,” he says. “I’m still up on the music, I’m not stuck in the 90s or anything. I’m not crazy about the social media, but maybe I’m just stubborn.”
On the road, he’s not one to simply hole up in his room by himself, either. “He’s right in there and he’s one of the guys,” Turris says. “That’s why everyone respects him so much. He interacts with everybody from the rookies to the veterans.”
Even his coach has seen Spezza’s fun side, but the moustachioed bench boss also points to a studious part of the new captain’s personage that intrigued. “He is a relaxed guy and he likes to have fun, but he’s very serious about hockey,” MacLean says. “He’s a student of the game and a fan of the game. He knows all the trivia and he loves to do the research about the history.”
If Spezza wants to do some book learnin’ early on this season, maybe he can delve into the history of Canada’s Olympic hockey team and dark horses who made the final cut. It’s relevant since he was a surprise snub when the team’s orientation camp was held over the summer, meaning no ball hockey with Mike Babcock for the skilled Senator. Spezza was told by Canadian brass his missing nearly all of last season hurt his profile, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to book a Caribbean vacation during the Olympic break just yet. He’s going to work through the slight and try to prove his way onto the final roster.
“You have to use it as fuel,” he says. “I hoped they would look at my entire body of work instead of the fact that I missed most of last year. I’m definitely going to use it as motivation. I want to be in that upper echelon.”
And he can start by leading the Senators back up the standings. While MacLean may not be worried about individual numbers for his new on-ice general, Spezza did average more than a point per game in his last full campaign with Ottawa and now he’s got Ryan, one of the purest finishers in the league, running shotgun.
Turris has seen Spezza’s arsenal up close and personal and is still in awe. “A big thing is how strong he is and his ability to keep the puck under pressure,” he says. “He has smarts and he sees the game. The plays he makes are incredible.”
So it’s over the remparts once again for Spezza and now the team is his to lead into battle. There may have been some awshucks humility in him earlier in life, but now the veteran is focused. With the ‘C’ on his chest and passion to win in his heart, Spezza is embracing responsibility. “It’s something that can’t be taken lightly,” he says. “I’m looking forward to the challenge and honored to be given the opportunity.”
And given the pain he endured last season, it’s an opportunity he knows not to squander.
By Ryan Kennedy
The Hockey News Archive
Image credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images
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