Snapshots: Tkachuk, Cozens, Red Wings

The Tkachuk family has dominated late-summer headlines, leading to plenty of opportunities for the three NHL players – retired pro Keith Tkachuk, Florida Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk, and Ottawa Senators star Brady Tkachuk – to sit down with media from across the hockey world. The one throughline from each conversation has been Brady’s desire to stick with the Ottawa Senators. He told as much to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski, sharing that the team’s push into the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs went far towards proving what the young core is capable of.

The Senators entered the 2024-25 season with one of the youngest rosters in the league – eighth-youngest, to be exact. They blazed through an incredibly successful season despite that, finishing the year with the top Eastern Conference Wild Card and just one point behind the eventual Cup-winning Panthers. Ottawa’s surge was spearheaded by young studs like Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, and Jake Sanderson. Those three were the only ones to score more than Tkachuk’s 29 goals and 55 points in 72 regular season games. But Tkachuk showed his importance to the squad when he led the team with four goals and seven points in six postseason games. Ottawa will return a fairly similar squad next season, and with a bode of confidence from their captain, may be able to find their way out of Wild Card standing or beyond the first round.

Other notes from around the league:

• A key focus of the Senators’ 2025-26 season will be the performance of second-line center Dylan Cozens, who the team acquired from the Buffalo Sabres in a swap for Joshua Norris last Spring. Julian McKenzie of The Athletic shares that Cozens only needs to reach 20 goals, and maintain his all-around impact, to earn find a successful season. Cozens has only crossed the 20-goal mark once in his career – when he pushed for 31 goals and 68 points in the 2022-23 season. But he’s come close at other points, with 18 goals in 2023-24 and 16 goals last year. In fact, Cozens’ five goals in 21 games with the Senators perfectly paces him for a 20-goal performance across 82 games. That should be an achievable step for the 24-year-old centerman, though his goal will certainly be to further prove he can return to the heights of his 2023 scoring. Doing so could give Ottawa an ace up their sleeves as they look to one-up their performance from last year.
• Years of stocking the prospect pool should begin to pay off for the Detroit Red Wings next season. They…