Damien Cox: The NHL’s hottest sniper? Ex-Leaf Connor Brown is full of surprises in Ottawa

Connor Brown’s hockey career has looped around. Or lapped itself. Whichever image you prefer. The point is, he’s back to where he started.

The players around him, his teammates, are the same in many ways. Back then it was Auston Matthews and now it’s Tim Stutzle, both arriving for their first NHL games fresh from European competition. Then it was Mitch Marner, now it’s Josh Norris. Then Zach Hyman, now Drake Batherson. Then Morgan Rielly, now Thomas Chabot.

This year’s Ottawa Senators are very similar in many ways to the Toronto Maple Leafs who gathered in the fall of 2016, coming off a season as the worst team in the NHL. Both were coltish, lacking in balance and strength, but excited to press ahead, to reach for a future that everyone in the game promised would be exciting.

Brown was with the Leafs in ’16; now he’s a Senator. But he’s a very different person and player. Then he was a sixth-round draft pick who, despite having achieved all kinds of really good things as a junior and a minor leaguer, was still on the fringe, still an uncertain NHLer.

Now, he makes $3.6 million (U.S.) a season. That puts him in the top 300 salaries in a 750-player league, not bad at all. He has a fiancée now, and they share an apartment in Ottawa with a Bernese Mountain dog.

In Toronto, he was all energy and enthusiasm, salivating for a little power-play time. Now he’s an established veteran, a calming influence, one of a handful of experienced players left on an Ottawa team that started the season terribly, but for the past six weeks has been causing all kinds of problems for the other six clubs in the all-Canadian North Division.

“I’ve seen what really works in this league and I can share my knowledge, talk about the ups and downs,” he said in a phone interview from Vancouver. “I’m sharing those lessons I’ve learned with my teammates as much as possible. This is a very young locker room. I mean, most of the guys are under 25.”

As a team, the Senators have proven to be a poor fit for a number of veterans this season. Braydon Coburn and Cedric Paquette arrived in the nation’s capital in a salary-cap deal with Tampa, and both are gone now. Matt Murray signed a four-year, $25-million contract to play for the Sens, and much of his season has been miserable. He’s injured now.

Alex Galchenyuk signed in Ottawa over the off-season, and the Sens couldn’t move him along fast enough. Mike Reilly and Erik Gudbranson were sturdy parts of the Ottawa defence during the winter. Now Reilly skates in Boston and Gudbranson is a Predator. Derek Stepan was acquired to be the team’s unofficial leader. He was lost for the season with a shoulder injury.

Brown, however, has prospered. He’s the only one of the top six scorers on the roster older than 24. He’s also been the hottest sniper in the NHL of late — at least he was until Vancouver silenced him and beat the Sens on Saturday, after losing to them two nights earlier.

Still, Brown has 11 goals in his last 14 games. Before that, he had one in 13 games, which tells you something about how streaky this game can be.

“It’s been great lately,” he said. “I re-evaluated how I was approaching the game, telling myself to relax and trust my instincts. I think I can get in my own way at times. I’d done that in my career in Toronto. You know, out there thinking ‘What’s the right play?’ all the time. Now I’m older and I’ve learned if I can do one game, I can do it every game.”

He looks back fondly upon his days playing for the Leafs in his hometown. They gave him a chance. Only 24 of the 155 players drafted ahead of him in 2012 have played more NHL games. He was that industrious worker-bee type as a Leaf, and surprised with 20 goals in his first season. After that the numbers began to dwindle, and he seems to realize now he needed to move on to grow as a professional.

“I was playing like a shell of myself in those last couple of years in Toronto,” he said. “Ottawa was a fresh start, a chance to play to my potential.”

It was a complicated deal that made him a Senator in 2019. The Leafs wanted Cody Ceci and cap space. Ottawa was willing to take on Nikita Zaitsev and Brown, with a bunch of smaller pieces involved. It was a better deal for Ottawa. Brown and Zaitsev are still there, Ceci plays in Philly and the cap space was gobbled up by other players.

These days, the Sens can look back on the 2020-21 season and imagine that the lack of a training camp hurt them, and if the season had started in March they might be battling for a playoff berth.

The moves general manager Pierre Dorion makes next will be interesting. In Toronto, the Leafs brought in old hands such as Patrick Marleau and Ron Hainsey for the 2017-18 season, and Dorion will probably do the same if he can. Luring players to Ottawa isn’t easy. Right now, with youngsters Shane Pinto and Jacob Bernard-Docker arriving after their collegiate seasons looking for ice time, there’s barely enough room for all the kids.