Frank McGee, the Ottawa Senators’ First Franchise Player – The Hockey Writers – Hockey History

On Oct. 8, 1992, the Ottawa Senators hit the ice for the first time in nearly 60 years, joining the modern NHL as an expansion team. Since then, the team has been searching for a player to bring the Stanley Cup to the nation’s capital. At first, it looked like it might be Alexei Yashin or Alexandre Daigle, but Daniel Alfredsson and Jason Spezza usurped them as the true faces of the franchise and came within three games of taking home the Cup. Then Erik Karlsson took the reins, propelling the Senators to the 2017 Eastern Conference Final before a trade halted the team’s momentum, and he was replaced with the trio of Brady Tkachuk, Jake Sanderson, and Tim Stutzle who may be young but just recently broke the team’s seven-year playoff drought.

However, almost 90 years before Ottawa returned to the NHL, the Senators were led by Frank McGee. With him at the helm, the team successfully defended the Stanley Cup for three-straight years, earning them the nickname of the “Silver Seven.” Few teams have been as dominant as the 1903-06 Senators, and much of it was thanks to their fearless leader, who not only was the face of his team but also the city in which he played. Although his reign was short, he was easily the Senators’ first franchise player.

The Birth of the Senators

After the first indoor game was played in 1875 in Montreal, hockey’s popularity skyrocketed across Canada. It didn’t take long for the first teams to start popping up, many of which competed at the 1883 Montreal Winter Carnival, which hosted the first hockey tournament. At that fateful event, Ottawans Jack Kerr, Halder Kirby, and Frank Jenkins found themselves thinking they could beat those teams on the ice, so they formed own team. Simply dubbed the Ottawa Hockey Club, they became the first team in both Ottawa and Ontario. However, that also meant they had no competition, so for the first three years, they played in the Montreal Winter Carnival. But it wasn’t long before leagues began popping up all over Eastern Canada, and more often than not, the Ottawa HC was on the ground floor as a founding member.

It didn’t take long for the Ottawa HC to leap to the top of Ontario hockey. From 1890-92, the team lost just two of their 14 matches and outscored their opponents 54-18, leading to back-to-back Ontario Hockey Association (OHA) titles. During the celebration following the 1892 season, Lord Stanley of Present, Canada’s Governor General, sent the…