- Tim Stutzle waved off Brad Marchand’s captaincy chirp at the Senators Charity Open on Tuesday
- Drake Batherson trains with Marchand in the offseason and texted him once the comment blew up
- Read below for Stutzle’s full answer and where Ottawa’s captaincy search sits
Tim Stutzle does not care what Brad Marchand thinks of him as a captain.
Reporters at the Senators Charity Open asked the 24-year-old on Tuesday about Marchand publicly laughing at the idea of him wearing the ‘C’ in Ottawa. “I don’t care about his opinion,” Stutzle said.
He expanded on it a bit when the follow-ups came, and he was not exactly wounded by any of it.
“I don’t really care. I think he’s a great player trying to get in other guys’ heads.”
Watch the full Stutzle media availability from the golf tournament:
All of this started last week. An Instagram post listed Stutzle, Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot as the three finalists for Ottawa’s vacant captaincy, and Marchand dropped “Hahahah ….. stutzle…. hahaha” in the comments. The screenshot spread fast, and we had it here.
Drake Batherson wound up stuck in the middle. The Ottawa winger spends his summers training with Marchand back home in Nova Scotia, so he went straight to the source once the comment took off.
“I texted him. I said, ‘Marchy, what are you doing?'” Batherson said with a laugh. “I told Timmy it’s all good. He’s been doing that for 20 years, that’s just Marchy being Marchy.”
Nobody has the job yet. General manager Steve Staios told the room Tuesday that the club will not rush the decision, per Andrew Wilimek, and he pointed to a group with several players who could wear the letter.
The opening exists because Brady Tkachuk asked out and got traded to Florida in June, which is also how Marchand became his teammate. Chabot, one of the other finalists, said Tuesday he was not happy about the exit.
Ottawa opens the preseason Sept. 21 against Montreal and starts the regular season Oct. 3 against Toronto. The ‘C’ could still be sitting unclaimed when that puck drops.
