Greetings Sens fans, I hope your body clock is prepared for some strange start times this week.

For our fans in the Eastern Time Zone, our next four games will roll out as follows:

Monday in Los Angeles – 9 p.m.

Wednesday in Vegas – 10 p.m.

Friday in St. Louis – 4 p.m.

Sunday in Dallas – 6 p.m.

That’s a six-hour range in start times, which will likely leave you feeling a tad discombobulated. The good news is that you’re probably starving for Senators hockey and willing to put up with the quirky start times, considering we only played two games last week.

And the lack of action made it easy for me to pick my favourite moment from the past seven days.

It wasn’t Tim Stützle’s game-winner on Saturday in San Jose, a rare play that saw all five Ottawa players touch the puck before the goal. Nor was it Drake Batherson’s late-game heroics in Anaheim on Thursday, when he deflected a Jake Sanderson shot in for the winner with less than two minutes left in regulation.

Instead, my favourite moment from last week came during Stephen Halliday’s NHL debut in Anaheim. I loved the TSN cameras catching him doing the rookie solo lap and watching his family soaking in every moment from the stands inside the Honda Center.

Halliday’s second intermission interview with TSN – after he notched his first career NHL point – was really special too as he acknowledged having his parents there for the moment.

“They’ve been there for all the ups and downs of my career,” Halliday said during the intermission. “It means a lot for them to fly across the country and see my first game.”

It was a great reminder that Halliday’s path to that moment was anything but easy.

He moved away from his family in Maryland when he was 15 years old so he could face better competition in the Greater Toronto area. He was passed over for two straight NHL Drafts before Ottawa took a chance on him – as a 20-year-old – in the fourth round of the 2022 NHL Draft.

It took my mind back to a long feature I did with Stephen when I was a reporter with The Athletic a couple of years ago.

Stephen’s dad James has always been a die-hard Maple Leafs fan and there was a memorable family bet back in 2013, when Stephen was just 10 years old.

“My dad loves Toronto, but I would just cheer for any team that was playing against the Leafs on a given night,” Stephen told me. (That quote alone should endear Stephen to Senators fans).

The terms of their bet were simple: There was a hat Stephen wanted to buy from Dick’s Sporting Goods and if the Leafs won Game 7 against Boston, Stephen would have to cough up the $25 for the hat. But if the Bruins emerged victorious, James would have to buy the hat for his son.

Toronto took a 4-1 lead in the third period, sending a young Halliday into a puddle of tears.

“I remember bawling my eyes out,” laughed Halliday. “The Leafs were up by three goals in Game 7 and I was thinking I had to pay him back for that hat.”

The Bruins then authored an epic comeback, which flipped the script inside the Halliday household.

“After the game, I was jumping all over him. I was laughing at him,” says Halliday. “My dad was in total shock. His head was down and he was really upset.”

I love re-visiting these old anecdotes and stories because they seem really timely this week. It gives you a little window in the Halliday household and the competitive fires that burned within. And if you read that entire feature article, you’ll realize the dedication and perseverance it takes from an entire family to have their son reach the NHL.

After the magic of watching his son make his NHL debut last week, I’m assuming James has switched his allegiances now to cheer for Ottawa.

And if we have to convert fans over to the Senators one at a time, this is a pretty good way to do it.

Trivia time:

The Sens are on a season-long road trip that will take them to games played in three different time zones: Pacific, Central and Eastern. So here is a fun (and weird) two-part trivia question for this week:

Can you name the last Senators player to score a hat trick outside of the Eastern Time Zone?

Can you name all four Sens players to score a hat trick outside of the Eastern Time Zone in the salary cap era? (Since 2005-06).

Answer at the bottom of this column.

Jon Cooper predicted this Atlantic Division logjam

Going down memory lane with that Stephen Halliday story got me thinking about another old story I wrote that has some relevance this week, especially when you look at the standings. The Atlantic has morphed into the most tightly contested division in the NHL and as we wake up on Monday, only four points separate first place from sixth.

It reminded me of a conversation I had with Lightning head coach Jon Cooper when I was a reporter with The Athletic two years ago.

I asked Cooper, Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman to look at the Senators and the rest of the Atlantic Division and how they saw the division playing out in the next couple of years.

Cooper was somewhat prophetic when he said, “I think it’s going to get more and more muddled. Maybe we come back to the pack a bit more and they’re going to close the gap. And there will be a big mess.”

Cooper also said we would be asking the question, “Who’s coming in first and who’s coming in sixth?”

In hindsight, Cooper nailed it.

Media roundup: Looking back at some interesting and fun Senators stories you might have missed over the past seven days.

Want to know how our video team would have flagged that offside goal for the Sharks in the first period on Saturday night? Our latest Breakaway feature profiles our video coaching staff of Mike King and Josh Mallory. Our lead videographer Ben Coles spent roughly 48 hours straight with our video crew in late October, documenting their crazy schedule and the immense pressure they are under to get calls right. If you’ve got 20 minutes to spare, I highly recommend you watching this feature because you’ll have a whole new respect for the video coaches.

Shane Pinto joined NHL Network’s ‘Players Only’ segment last week, for a fun and candid 15-minute interview. The highlight (pun intended) was watching Shane break down an old picture of him with frosted tips. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” laughed Shane.

Drake Batherson is off to a fantastic start this season, racking up a team-leading 13 assists despite missing the first three games of the season. Our Andrew Wilimek spent some time with Drake before the road trip to find out about his quiet confidence. (And there is a great lesson in here for younger players, as Drake talks about being passed over for the QMJHL draft when he was a teenager because he was barely five-foot-five).

I really enjoy it when two reporters take a stab at a similar story. Case in point: Last week, both Alex Adams of Sportsnet and Julian McKenzie from The Athletic wrote about Tim Stutzle’s prolific scoring pace since switching the tape job on his stick. Read Alex’s version here and Julian’s account – which includes some insight from Kris Knoblauch, Cole Caufield and Paul Maurice – can be found here.

Tyler Kleven is one of our more under-the-radar players when it comes to media coverage. But it was great that he took some time to chat with The Drive on TSN 1200 last week.

Random thoughts:

Our game on Monday evening will be featured on Amazon Prime. They have a very cool studio pre-game show, which should include a new wrinkle on Monday: Claude Giroux being interviewed while he’s on the ice for the pre-game skate at Crypto.com Arena. Usually these interviews happen on the bench, but Claude seems open to doing this one while he’s skating around – probably because his old Flyers teammate Jody Shelley is one of the panelists who will be interviewing him.

Most of you know that I have a weird and quirky brain when it comes to Sens history, so I hope you’ll appreciate this completely random thought I had this week while the Sens were in Anaheim. It’s exciting to see the Ducks on an upward trajectory because for whatever reason, Ottawa’s success seems strangely tied to Anaheim. The Senators have made the conference final three times in franchise history in 2003, 2007 and 2017. On all three occasions, the Ducks have also reached the Western Conference final on the other side. Coincidence? Probably. But I’m going to plant the seed for you to start pulling for the Ducks in the Western Conference – unless we meet them again in the Stanley Cup Final.

Trivia answer:

Okay, this was a pretty tricky two-part question. Here are your answers:

Zach Sanford was the last Ottawa player with a hat trick outside of the Eastern Time Zone. He scored three goals on November 22, 2021 in Colorado – during a 7-5 loss to the Avalanche.

Only three players other than Sanford have scored a hat trick for Ottawa outside of the Eastern Time Zone in the salary cap era. They are:

Tim Stützle – May 8, 2021 at Winnipeg. (His first career hat trick happened in front of no fans, so it led to this sweet moment back in Ottawa).

Mika Zibanejad – February 27, 2016 at Calgary. (Zibanejad scored his three goals in the span of only 2:38 in the third period for the fastest hat trick in Sens history).

Jason Spezza – who did it twice, with a hat trick on October 15, 2013 at Phoenix and March 20, 2010 at Dallas.