Ottawa Valley - "Hockey Country"

"Hockey Country"

The Ottawa Senators public relations office call Ottawa and the Valley "hockey country". Indeed it is the home not only of the once mighty Senators, which folded in 1934 and came back in the 1990s, but also of such famous NHL builders as Tommy Gorman and Ambrose O'Brien. With the Senators' arena Scotiabank Place which used to be known as the Corel Centre, located in Kanata, Ontario, which links Ottawa with the Valley, residents of the Upper Ottawa Valley can easily access the games. The Scotiabank Place is the home of the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame, several restaurants, a fitness complex and several businesses. The Scotiabank place including the standing room, has a capacity of holding 20,500 people for any event. Many of the members of the Senator's coaching and management staff in 2010 hail from or have strong connections to, the town of Shawville.

The Ottawa Valley's Renfrew Millionaires, the creation of lumber baron O'Brien, was a small-town professional hockey team that won the league championship in 1910. Ottawa and the valley are also the home of such outstanding players as Frank Nighbor, Aurel Joliat, Frank "King" Clancy, Frank Boucher, Kurtis Foster and Denis Potvin; the latter was the star defenceman of the New York Islanders dynasty of the late 1970s. Ottawa's Brian Kilrea holds the record as the Ontario Hockey League's longest-serving coach with a record number of games behind the bench of the Ottawa 67's junior hockey team. The 67's themselves are something of a legend, having a loyal following that results in sellout games almost every time they step on the ice. The Ottawa 67's play hockey at Lansdowne Park which used to be home to the Ottawa Senators. Lansdowne has a capacity of over 9,682 seats. The Ottawa 67's have won only two memorial cups (1984, 1999) since they first started in 1967.