A few seasons after the Vegas Golden Knights redefined the concept, expansion is again one of the talking points of a new National Hockey League season.
The Seattle Kraken’s splashy entry is the second unveiling of a new team under quite different circumstances that two retired Barrie-area NHLers experienced decades ago when expansion was synonymous with penny-pinching and basement-dwelling teams.
“It was the toughest two years of my career,” said Barrie native Darren Rumble, who was part of the Ottawa Senators roster 29 years ago in the nation’s capital. “Opening night was the highlight. Alanis Morisette sang O Canada, we had an 11-minute standing ovation and we beat the Canadiens.”
Rumble assisted on Sylvain Turgeon’s game-winning goal that night at Ottawa Civic Centre, a 5-3 win.
Operating under much more difficult rules to stock their roster than the Kraken and Golden Knights, the Senators struggled throughout the rest of the schedule with a 10-70-4 record. It was only marginally better the next season as the Sens went 14-61-9.
The Senators early beginnings were in stark contrast to Vegas, who made it to the Stanley Cup final in their first season playing in the NHL. The Golden Knights were conference finalists last season and are already considered one of the league’s marquee franchises.
Though it is early, the Kraken have a similar off-ice vibe surrounding them, with deep-pocketed owners and a new arena about to open next week with the team’s home-opener.
By contrast, the 1992-93 Senators changed general managers after a season, played in a junior hockey building (capacity 10,500), and had unstable ownership that pursued a risky strategy of building a new arena far outside the city limits that soon — and still does — proved to be a white elephant.
“It’s really all about the rules back then,” Rumble said when asked about the performance difference between expansion eras right up through the four teams – Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus and Minnesota – that were admitted in the late-1990s and now.
“Another problem we had in Ottawa was that most of our players were older (journeymen) who were forced to think first about themselves (in order) to extend their careers," he added.
Considered a foundational piece under original Senators GM Mel Bridgeman, Rumble clashed with new Sens GM Randy Sexton during his second off-season in Ottawa. He was eventually shipped out to the club’s American Hockey League affiliate the following season while the NHL was reduced to a 48-game schedule because of the 1994-95 lockout.
One of Rumble’s teammates that year in the AHL was Bruce Gardiner, another Barrie-area product, three years Rumble’s junior.
At the time, Gardiner was beginning his professional career that would eventually see him play 312 NHL games, most of them with the Senators. Rumble had departed by then, first back to the Philadelphia Flyers organization and then to St. Louis and Tampa Bay.
Gardiner was later picked up by Columbus in the 2000 Expansion Draft and scored the Blue Jackets' first goal when the season started later that fall. The Blue Jackets were much better than Ottawa in their first season, but soon came to define the mediocre records of many pre-Golden Knights/Kraken expansion teams.
Unfortunately for Gardiner, that season was his last full NHL campaign, though he had a brief stint with the New Jersey Devils and later played in Europe. He’s now a Barrie police officer.
Rumble survived in pro hockey for another decade after leaving the expansion Senators. Though he saw just spot duty with the Flyers and Blues, he was generally considered one of the best defencemen playing outside the NHL during that time. He won the Eddie Shore Award as the AHL’s top defenceman and the Tampa Bay Lightning signed him for two seasons that culminated in him being part of that organization’s 2004 Stanley Cup triumph.
As chaotic as it was at times, Rumble credits the Ottawa experience for helping him. He wasn’t alone — the Senators' original coaching staff, head coach Rick Bowness (Dallas Stars) and assistant Alain Vigneault (Flyers), have had long, successful coaching careers and are both currently head coaches.
“Some of the guys from my two years in Ottawa are still some of the guys I still talk to the most of any of my former teammates,” said Rumble, specifically referencing Brad Shaw, the longtime NHLer who is now a Vancouver Canucks assistant coach.
“It was just tough to pick up the newspaper every day and read 15 different stories about how bad you’re struggling,” he said.
“Not playing well in a Canadian market can be really tough.”
Rumble is now the associate head coach of the Gatineau Olympiques of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, his latest coaching stint that has also included six seasons as head coach of the Moncton Wildcats. Rumble was on the short list of candidates for the Barrie Colts top job when Warren Rychel, Rumble’s former teammate with the Kitchener Rangers, got the gig.
Events of nearly 30 years ago still cross his mind. On the winning goal, he pinched and created a turnover and threw the puck over to Turgeon, who buried it and briefly made the Senators the talk of the hockey world for all the right reasons.
“Hair-raising stuff,” he said of looking back.
