- Jake Sanderson left Ottawa’s opener after just 4:29 of ice time
- Travis Green says the star defenseman re-aggravated an old lower-body issue
- Read below for the injury video and Green’s postgame comments
The Senators won their season opener in Toronto. They might have lost their best defenseman doing it.
Jake Sanderson exited Saturday’s 3-2 win over the Maple Leafs in the first period, and head coach Travis Green said afterward that the 24-year-old re-aggravated a lower-body injury he’d been dealing with.
Green was asked about Sanderson’s status after the game and sounded relieved it wasn’t worse.
“We’ll know more in the next few days, but Sandy was smart enough to pull himself early enough that he didn’t reaggravate it too badly,” Green said. “He just felt that it was coming and took himself out.”
Catch Green’s full postgame media availability (his comments start around the 9:43 mark):
It happened early in the first period. Sanderson got tangled up with Nick Paul along the boards and went down awkwardly on one knee, staying there for a moment.
Take a look at the play:
Cameras caught him visibly frustrated on the bench before he went down the tunnel. The Senators announced a short time later that he wouldn’t return:
Sanderson finished with 4:29 of ice time on six shifts, with one hit and one blocked shot.
That left five defensemen to soak up the rest. New captain Thomas Chabot logged 27:06 and scored a goal and an assist, Jordan Spence played 22:30, and Tyler Kleven moved up and handled 21:43.
Losing Sanderson for any stretch would sting. He put up 14 goals and 54 points in 67 games last season and finished 10th in Norris Trophy voting. He also missed 15 games in 2025-26 with a concussion and an upper-body injury, and Ottawa went 9-4-2 without him.
Ottawa’s blue line was already thin. Artem Zub started the year on the shelf with an injury from last spring’s playoffs, though the team expects him back early in the season.
He’s in the third year of an eight-year, $64.4 million extension. The Senators visit Boston on Monday and Detroit on Tuesday, and Sanderson’s status for that back-to-back is up in the air.
