Ottawa Senators vs Chicago Blackhawks

Lore & Background

The roots of this rivalry go deeper than any single franchise's memory. In the 1920s and 1930s, the original Ottawa Senators and the young Chicago Black Hawks were two of the league's most prominent clubs, and their meetings carried the full gravity of early professional hockey. Ottawa was the capital city, the political heart of the country; Chicago was the industrial powerhouse of the Midwest. When their teams met, it was not merely a game—it was a statement about which city's working-class, beer-soaked, winter-frozen identity would dominate the ice.

The modern era reset the clock but not the feeling. When the Senators returned to the NHL in 1992, they carried the red-and-white colours, the crest, and the expectation of a city that had mourned the loss of its original team. Chicago, meanwhile, had endured the long drought of the 1990s before the 2010s brought a dynasty. The two franchises orbit different eras of NHL history, yet when they share a rink the old tension surfaces: the capital city's pride against the Windy City's swagger, the Eastern Conference's slower, more physical style against the West's speed and structure.

Rivalries of this type are sustained less by any single incident and more by a shared sense of history. Fans in both cities point to the other's legacy as a benchmark. Senators supporters invoke the original club's early Cups; Blackhawks fans cite their seven banners and their 2010s run. Neither side concedes the other's claim on the sport's soul, and that quiet, persistent contest for legitimacy is the true engine of the feud.

In Their Own Story

The arena was half-full, the kind of cross-conference Tuesday night game that never made the highlight reel. The puck dropped at centre ice and a Senator in red and a Blackhawk in red and black went at it shoulder-to-shoulder, sticks cracking together in that sharp, wooden sound that only a real fight produces. The ref was already skating over. Around them, the crowd noise was a low, sustained hum—nothing like a playoff roar, but steady, the way a river runs under ice. A fan in the lower bowl, a man in a faded 1992 Senators warm-up jacket, leaned on the glass and muttered, "They always think they're the old team." His wife, three rows back, didn't look up from her phone. "We are the old team, sweetheart. We were here first." The puck was still in play. The game was still on. It always was.

Reader's Guide

The Senators–Blackhawks rivalry is best understood as a rivalry of heritage rather than geography. Unlike the Blackhawks' well-known feuds with Montreal or Toronto, the Ottawa connection is built on shared history: both clubs claim a place among the NHL's earliest and most important institutions. The original Senators helped found the league; the Blackhawks became one of its six pillars. When the modern Senators arrived in 1992, they stepped into a narrative that predated them by a generation, and every meeting with Chicago implicitly asked whether that inherited legacy was enough.

Key tensions have been fueled by the conference split. Four games a year means no long regular-season grudge to build; instead, each meeting arrives with a blank slate and full emotional charge. Playoff series between the two, when the bracket allows, carry outsized weight because neither side has had the chance to "get even" over a 41-game stretch.

Statistically, the head-to-head record has swung back and forth across the decades, and no single era has produced a lopsided dominance. That balance is itself part of the identity: neither city can claim the rivalry as its own, which keeps the competition honest and the animosity mutual.

For both franchises, the matchup reinforces a core identity question—what does it mean to be a "historic" NHL club? Ottawa answers with the 1917 founding and the 2007 Cup. Chicago answers with seven banners and a 2010s dynasty. The rivalry is, in the end, a running argument about whose story is the more important one to tell.

Did You Know?

• The original Ottawa Senators were one of the three founding members of the NHL in 1917, making them the oldest continuously claimed franchise in the league's history.
• The Blackhawks changed their name from 'Black Hawks' to 'Blackhawks' in 1986 to align with the team's aviation-inspired identity.
• Because the two clubs sit in different conferences, they play only four regular-season games per year—far fewer than intra-divisional rivals who meet up to 23 times.
• The modern Ottawa Senators' 2007 Stanley Cup victory came in a seven-game Final against the Anaheim Ducks, capping a run that included a memorable playoff series against the New Jersey Devils.