By Andrew Seymour
They may be the Ottawa Senators, but many of the hockey team’s players choose to call Kanata home.
When the Senators moved from the Ottawa Civic Centre to the Corel Centre in early 1996, many of the players moved with the team.
Today only a handful of players still live in central Ottawa.
Defencemen Wade Redden, 21, and Chris Phillips, 20, decided in the off-season to take up residence in Centretown.
The pair lived in Kanata last season, but each chose to move to places in Centretown because they wanted to be closer to the heart of the city.
“Everything’s real close downtown,” says Redden, who lives between Bank Street and Elgin Street.
“Being a young guy, it just kind of makes sense to live down here.”
Phillips, who lives along the Rideau Canal, says living in Ottawa is a lot more interesting than living in Kanata.
“There’s a little more to do when we have some time off,” he says.“There’s always a place to go, any night of the week.”
Redden adds Kanata is a great place for players with families, but he says it doesn’t hold the same appeal for the younger players.
“There wasn’t much to do. It was great in the sense that it was right close to the rink, but you had to travel a long way just to go out,” he says, adding that he likes eating out or going to the movies.
Although living in Ottawa means he’s further from the Corel Centre, Redden says he doesn’t mind the longer drive to work.
“The drive in the morning isn’t quite as bad as one might think,” he says. “It’s actually quite refreshing.”
Goalie Damian Rhodes, 29, is another Senator who lives in Ottawa.
While he admits his wife Lara chose the location of their downtown condominium, Rhodes says he enjoys living in Ottawa.
“I love the building we’re in. We’ve been there for three years now and we don’t want to give it up,” says Rhodes.
He says living downtown has other advantages than being close to the market and shopping.
“It’s closer to the airport,” Rhodes jokes, which is a convenient feature when you play 41 games in cities all across North America.
One of the newest Senators, forward Andreas Johansson, who was signed as a free agent in the off-season and has only been in Ottawa for a few months, is impressed with the city.
The 25-year-old lives in Kanata for convenience, but says he visits downtown Ottawa frequently.
After stops in Pittsburgh and New York with the Islanders, Johansson adds Ottawa is one of the nicest cities he’s played in.
“It’s a nice city where you can actually spend some time downtown, which you couldn’t do in Pittsburgh,” says Johansson.
“It’s a lot like Sweden. It’s a little bit smaller and everything is jammed together.”
Forward Chris Murray, 24, says he and most of the other players with families prefer Kanata because it is a quiet community and is close to the rink.While Murray says he doesn’t go downtown often, he thinks Ottawa’s community is one of the best.
“It’s clean and it’s got a lot of history to it, and that really adds to the whole scene down there,” says Murray.
“I’m not much of a city person though,” he adds. “I prefer to be out in the bush instead of in the middle of the hustle and bustle.”
For Redden and Phillips, it’s the excitement of Centretown that makes life a little more interesting when they aren’t playing hockey. In their time off the ice, they might even take in a few more attractions Ottawa has to offer.
After playing two seasons in Ottawa, Redden admits he only made his first trip to Parliament Hill with his parents at the end of October.
“I’ve never been there to look over the river into Hull. It’s quite a view,” he says, adding he hopes to visit a few more historic sites before his playing days in Ottawa are done.