Ottawa! Ottawa! Ottawa!

Lore & Background

The chant's power lies in its simplicity. No melody, no complex harmony — just the city's name hammered out in a staccato rhythm that any child can pick up in the first row and any grandparent can sustain in the upper deck. In a league where rivalries are often defined by decades of grudges, the Senators' identity is built on something more elemental: the act of a community saying its own name back to itself, over and over, until the walls vibrate.

That identity is inseparable from the original Senators, the team that carried Ottawa's name across more than sixty years of professional hockey before the franchise disappeared in 1954. For a generation of fans, the modern club's arrival in 1992 was not a new beginning but a homecoming. The chant, in that context, is less a song and more a reclamation — a way of insisting that the name still belongs to the city, that the red-and-black jersey still means something even after the long gap.

The rivalry with Montreal deepens the chant's resonance. In a city that has long felt overshadowed by its larger neighbour, the act of chanting "Ottawa" in unison carries a quiet defiance. It is not merely support for a team; it is a small, repeated assertion of identity in a league and a country where Ottawa is never the loudest voice. The chant makes it so, for three beats at a time.

In Their Own Story

The arena lights dim to a low amber glow. The ice is freshly resurfaced, the Zamboni's last pass still glistening under the floodlights. In the lower bowl, a sea of red and black leans forward in unison. Someone in the third row starts it — a sharp, clipped syllable — and it ripples outward like a stone dropped in still water. *Ottawa.* The second wave hits the upper deck. *Ottawa.* The third one cracks the air and the glass windows above the boards shiver faintly. A kid in a too-big jersey, maybe seven years old, is screaming it with his whole chest while his father holds his hand. The players on the ice stop their warm-up drills, turn, and face the crowd. For a moment nobody skates, nobody talks. There is only the name of the city, repeated, repeated, repeated, until it stops being a word and becomes a pulse. Then the puck drops and the night belongs to them.

Reader's Guide

Canadian Tire Centre, the Senators' home since 1996, is a modern NHL arena located in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata. The building has cycled through several naming-rights sponsors over the years, but to fans it is simply "the building" or "the Sens building." The seating bowl wraps tightly around the ice, keeping the crowd close to the action and amplifying the sound of the chant in a way that larger, more open arenas cannot replicate.

The ritual is simple and democratic. At key moments — a goal, a save, a penalty kill, the pre-game anthem — the crowd locks into the three-beat "Ottawa! Ottawa! Ottawa!" rhythm. It is not choreographed; it emerges organically, often led by a section of the lower bowl. Fans in the upper deck pick it up a half-beat later, creating a rolling wave of sound. Red and black scarves, foam fingers, and homemade signs fill the stands, and the colour palette is so uniform from above that the crowd appears as a single red-and-black organism.

The team weaves itself into Ottawa's civic identity in ways that go beyond sport. The Senators' red-and-black is woven into local shop signage, school spirit days, and the city's winter aesthetic. The rivalry with Montreal is treated less as a sporting contest and more as a cultural conversation, referenced in local media, humour, and everyday speech. The chant, in all of this, is the thread that ties the arena to the street: a three-word sentence that any Ottawan can say, anywhere, at any time, and mean it.

Did You Know?

• The modern Ottawa Senators won the Stanley Cup in their very first NHL season, 1992–93, a feat that has made the franchise's early history a point of pride and identity for the fan base.
• The original Ottawa Senators franchise played professional hockey in the city from 1883 to 1954, meaning the name and the rivalry with Montreal predate the modern NHL by decades.
• The Senators' home arena has carried multiple naming-rights sponsors over the years, yet fans in Ottawa most commonly refer to it simply as the 'Sens building.'
• The 'Ottawa! Ottawa! Ottawa!' chant requires no instruments, no sheet music, and no leader — it is a purely vocal, self-organising ritual that any member of the crowd can initiate at any moment.