There have been plenty of trade rumors swirling around Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk \u2014 the Panthers, Blues, Flyers, Kings, name the team \u2014 and he said Wednesday that they are not only \u201cfrustrating,\u2019\u2019 but becoming a \u201cdistraction.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The rumors that perhaps the Senators and Tkachuk may both want a parting of the ways started in earnest not long after Tkachuk and Team USA won gold at the Winter Olympics over Canada. <\/p>\n
Tkachuk failing to record a point in Carolina\u2019s four-game sweep of the Senators has only fueled the rumor mill. <\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Tkachuk spoke to the media for the first time since the Senators\u2019 season came to a close. <\/p>\n
He had a good reason for the delay: His wife gave birth to a daughter.<\/p>\n
Since he missed Ottawa\u2019s end-of-season availability, he had the stage to himself on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Those rumors? They\u2019re not coming from him. <\/p>\n
\u201cNone of those things have ever come out of my mouth,\u2019\u2019 Tkachuk said, \u201cand quite honestly, it\u2019s just getting frustrating. It\u2019s becoming a distraction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been fully committed to this team, to this city and \u2026 it\u2019s just become a distraction. Frustrating to deal with.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The talk of Brady eventually teaming up with older brother Matthew Tkachuk in South Florida with the Panthers has been going on for some time now.<\/p>\n
But, Brady seemed to be very comfortable being the captain of the up-and-coming Senators. <\/p>\n
Moving on seemed at least to be something of a long shot. <\/p>\n
The past couple of months have seemingly changed that \u2014 although he says it has not. <\/p>\n
So, too, does general manager Steve Staios. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t bother with it,\u201d Staios said on Monday. \u201cWe know what we have internally. We have great communication with our players, so we really don\u2019t focus on it. This comes up very often. There\u2019s nothing that we have talked about, or thought about, where that conversation should happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tkachuk, 26, has two years left on the seven-year, $58 million deal he signed in 2021. <\/p>\n
He would be eligible to sign a contract extension starting next summer. <\/p>\n
While it does not sound like Tkachuk nor the Senators want anything to happen right now, this certainly could be something down the road. <\/p>\n
Right now, however, it seems like Tkachuk will be back with the Senators next season.<\/p>\n
But this is not something that will be going away. <\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t get why it\u2019s a consistent thing,\u2019\u2019 Tkachuk said. \u201cIt\u2019s happened so many times, personally, and it\u2019s frustrating.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
ON DECK: FLORIDA PANTHERS\u00a0OFFSEASON<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There have been plenty of trade rumors swirling around Ottawa captain Brady Tkachuk \u2014 the Panthers, Blues, Flyers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[80319,28,30,29,16995,53656,96129],"class_list":["post-253652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-brady-tkachuk","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-panthers","tag-matthew-tkachuk","tag-ottawa-senators"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}