OTTAWA — Michael Andlauer is hungry.
In the past hour on this early July day, the Ottawa Senators owner helped open the city’s new Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, smashing a guitar alongside fellow area business leaders as part of a christening ceremony. Then he hustled over to his team’s arena at Canadian Tire Centre for an interview, among other appointments. But first, lunchtime.
Seated at a small table inside the players’ lounge, Andlauer opens a fast food bag and unwraps his spicy chicken order to instead find — gasp — a regular grilled chicken sandwich. No problem. Darting to a nearby refrigerator, he grabs a bottle of sriracha, coats the chicken patty in chili sauce and slaps the bun back on top. As he chows down, he pauses to offer some waffle fries to a reporter.
Gone are the days when Andlauer began his boyhood mornings eating cereal in rehydrated milk powder on the second floor of a Montreal duplex. Now 60 years old with a salt-and-pepper beard, he carries a net worth of $1.2 billion, according to Forbes, having scaled the corporate ladder in healthcare logistics before selling his supply chain management company, Andlauer Healthcare Group, to UPS in April for $1.6 billion.
But his true “passion,” as Andlauer puts it, is running the Senators. A former beer-league goalie who once suited up as an intrasquad injury replacement for an OHL team he used to own, Andlauer bought the NHL franchise for $950 million in Sept. 2023, staving off would-be celebrity buyers like rapper Snoop Dogg, actor Ryan Reynolds and pop star The Weeknd. Less than two years later, he clearly feels comfortable in the boss chair — at least, enough to know where the chili sauce is kept.
Since Andlauer took over as majority owner following the death of Eugene Melnyk, the franchise has faced its share of challenges. A trade scandal resulted in the loss of a first-round draft pick. A saga to build a new arena is ongoing, as are efforts to enhance the fan experience at the current one. Don’t forget the rumors that Andlauer has been forced to shoot down over the past year alone — about captain Brady Tkachuk wanting out; about star winger Drake Batherson being moved; about the team moving to Quebec City after its mascot, Spartacat, wore a half-Nordiques, half-Senators jersey at a news conference announcing plans to play future preseason games there.
“I didn’t realize the impact that this hockey club has to this community,” Andlauer says. “And I mean, I should have paid more attention. The responsibility of being a good corporate citizen and making sure that we continue to improve is on my mind all the time, on and off the ice. So, that responsibility is bigger than I had anticipated.”
Even so, Andlauer has drummed up significant support from fans, players and team employees — a stark contrast to the unstable reputation of his late predecessor Melnyk (whose daughters retained a 10% ownership stake in the sale through their father’s estate). For a March survey at The Athletic, readers ranked Andlauer ninth among NHL owners with an overall B+ grade, with fans commending him for bringing “class and stability” and “respectability” back to Ottawa.
“He cares about his players, cares about the fan base and the city,” veteran Senators forward Claude Giroux said, likening Andlauer to another competitive, outspoken NHL owner in the late Ed Snider of the Philadelphia Flyers. “It’s easy to see.”
But the job doesn’t get any easier. Goodwill can only carry a sports owner so far.
Andlauer is walking through a rink-level corridor at Canadian Tire Centre when he comes across an old friend. He raises a hand and high-fives Steve Staios before wrapping the Senators’ president of hockey operations and general manager in a full-on embrace. Andlauer then jokes that Staios needs to leave the office and actually enjoy his summer vacation.
Then again, this same work ethic is why Andlauer has trusted Staios as his right-hand man for nearly a decade. Soon after buying the OHL’s Belleville Bulls in 2015 and moving the major-junior franchise to Hamilton, Ontario, Andlauer lured Staios from a player development job with the Toronto Maple Leafs to become his team president. A former NHL defenseman, Staios later assumed GM duties and led the rebranded Hamilton Bulldogs — the same name of an AHL franchise that Andlauer previously owned — to the 2018 OHL championship, their first of two during the duo’s reign.
“It was impressive to be a part of and kind of watch and learn from,” said Matt Turek, who joined the Bulldogs as a scout in 2015 and eventually took over as GM when Staios left for a special advisor role with the Edmonton Oilers in 2022. “I think that the biggest thing that Michael and Steve did was create a real positive foundation through character and culture, and it was on the ice and off the ice.”
It is a path that Andlauer hopes to replicate in Ottawa with Staios, who joined the Senators as president of hockey operations eight days after Andlauer became majority owner. Staios has since built the front office in his image, adding Dave Poulin as senior vice-president of hockey operations and Turek to run the Senators’ AHL affiliate in Belleville as their GM, among others.
“Previous regime,” Andlauer says, “I had someone who probably liked to do it himself.”
That someone, former general manager Pierre Dorion, departed the organization under mutual terms after the Senators were disciplined by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman for failing to properly notify the Vegas Golden Knights of winger Evgenii Dadonov’s partial no-trade clause in a July 2021 deal — two years before Andlauer’s arrival.
Yes, the error still eats at him.
Given the option of losing their first-round pick in either 2024, 2025 or 2026, the Staios-led Sens chose the third door and, barring a trade back in, will sit out next year’s opening night of the NHL draft. But whereas Andlauer once expressed hope that Bettman might eventually lessen the punishment if Ottawa kept its nose clean, he insists that he will “respect” the ultimate outcome.
“The reality is that, as an organization, we were negligent in the transaction,” Andlauer said. “And the league felt we would be held accountable. The amount of the penalty is judgmental. But I have to respect it.
“At the end of the day, I didn’t expect it to be that severe. I knew about it. I asked the lawyers of the seller to give me perspective. They felt it would be a slap on their wrist, perhaps a fine, but never to the extent of a first-round pick.”
As for their current roster, the Senators shied away from drastic changes this summer, opting instead to enter 2025-26 with $4 million-plus in salary cap space. But with the current $95.5 million cap ceiling projected to reach $104 million next season — and even higher in future seasons — Andlauer must decide whether Ottawa can keep up with the spending habits of bigger markets. And even if so, how does the team lure big free agents to a place with a decades-old reputation (fairly or not) as “the town fun forgot”?
“I think it’s something that we’ll earn,” Andlauer says.
To that end, early in his tenure, Andlauer took a tour of the team’s facilities and was taken aback by what he saw as a substandard setup, including training rooms that offered limited beds for treatment and space for equipment, and a small satellite doctors’ office tucked under the arena’s grandstand. In December, the Senators unveiled new, larger medical and sports-performance areas in the arena, featuring all-new equipment.
“He wants to win, and he just doesn’t say it; he shows it, too,” said Giroux, who is entering his 19th NHL season. “So, when you have an owner like that, I think the young guys don’t really realize how lucky we are. You want to play for an owner like that.”
Before his purchase of the Senators was official, Andlauer traveled to Toronto and met his new team’s captain for dinner. Andlauer had once golfed in Ireland with the winger’s father, former NHLer Keith Tkachuk, but he hadn’t yet met Brady, then still chasing his first Stanley Cup playoff appearance five years into his professional career.
During what turned into a marathon, four-hour meeting that touched on a variety of hockey topics, the captain spoke his mind about a specific group of fans feeling too comfortable in Ottawa’s arena.
“The thing I really dislike the most,” Andlauer remembers Tkachuk saying, “is when we play Toronto, and it’s a sea of blue. And it’s loud. And it’s uncomfortable.”
It’s an unfortunate consequence of being a younger franchise in a smaller market geographically sandwiched between NHL bluebloods in the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens, whose fan bases consistently invade Ottawa whenever their teams come to town. American teams like the Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres and New York Rangers have similarly led waves of visiting crowds into Canadian Tire Centre, located in Kanata nearly 30 minutes west of the city’s downtown core.
Adding to the all-around appeal is the fact that the Senators boast some of the league’s most affordable tickets and concession prices. But this is also a double-edged sword, especially in the playoffs. When the Maple Leafs were drawn as their first-round opponent last spring, Andlauer met with team president Cyril Leeder to brainstorm measures to keep the rink more red than blue, including discouraging season-ticket holders from selling to Leafs fans.
“And forget about the money part, because our gates could have been a lot higher,” Andlauer says.
Beyond fending off their rivals, both on the ice and in the stands, the Senators know there is work to be done from a team business perspective.
“We don’t need to be in the top 10 in the league in terms of revenues, but we can’t be in the bottom 10,” Leeder said. “We need to be in the middle group. We were always there in the 2000s when we had a competitive team, and I’m absolutely confident that the support’s there, that we’ll get back into that group.”
That is Andlauer’s goal, anyhow. He notes that the Senators currently rank in the league’s bottom five in season ticket holders, adding that they need to find better ways to connect with fans in a digital age, both in English and French.
“As I say to the players, I don’t pay you, the fans pay you,” Andlauer says. “You’ve got to make sure we respect the fans. The fans are the lifeblood.”
Though he claims to not like the attention that accompanies owning a team, Andlauer enjoys strolling through the Canadian Tire Centre on game nights and interacting with fans who want to take selfies — or even just to speak their mind. And he isn’t exactly shy about commanding headlines: In Dec. 2024 he accused the New York Rangers of “soft tampering” after trade rumors linked them to Tkachuk, and this offseason he entered a media scrum on a golf course green and, unprompted, immediately shot down rumors Drake Batherson was for sale.
“It is tough being a small market, I’m not going to lie,” Andlauer says. “But it’s a passion for me. … It’s about being sustainable, being able to reinvest in the business, not only on the ice but off the ice.”
Canadian Tire Centre will celebrate its 30th birthday in January. The Senators hope they will only be there for five more. (André Ringuette / NHLI via Getty Images)
Heading through the Zamboni tunnel toward the arena floor at Canadian Tire Centre, which is preparing for a Cirque du Soleil show, Andlauer approaches a section of faded-red fabric seats and presses his hand into a cushion.
“They’re from 30 years ago,” Andlauer says. “Have you ever sat in these seats? Just touch it, right in the middle. Feel the spring?”
Weeks later, the Senators replaced the entire lower bowl with leather seats, which until then had only existed in sections behind the benches. It was the latest update for a building that will celebrate its 30th birthday in January, and Andlauer says he is hoping his team stays there for just five more years.
Whether a new arena will actually get built that fast remains to be seen. Studies on zoning and transit, in addition to designs and decontamination, need to be completed before shovels hit the ground. Andlauer anticipates public funds will be required to help fund the construction, despite Ottawa mayor Mark Sutcliffe saying there’s no “appetite” for it. But for all of the team’s relative success last season, eclipsing 90 points and 40 wins for the first time since 2016-17, perhaps an even bigger achievement came with its recent completion of a nearly 11-acre land purchase at LeBreton Flats, where Andlauer hopes to build a new multipurpose venue.
Andlauer declined to divulge the exact price of the sale, which was made with the government-run National Capital Commission, but The Athletic has previously reported it to be approximately $30 million, according to a league source. Asked how long until construction could potentially begin on the LeBreton Flats arena, Andlauer first says that he has “absolutely no idea.” When the Senators and the NCC reached an agreement in principle last September, Andlauer thought he’d have an arena in three years. But now, Andlauer thinks he’ll have a better idea of the arena’s construction timeline by next year.
He continues, “I’m excited to get going. And that’s my nature. But there’s a process. It’s like building a hockey team.”
For now, Andlauer hopes to improve Canadian Tire Centre wherever he can. It might mean upgrading seats in the second level, or even installing a new Jumbotron. But, he says, only if it makes fiscal sense with the new venue on the way.
“It’s a great venue to watch a game from,” Andlauer says. “We’ll continue looking at improving things, not a huge overhaul.”
In May 2024, reflecting on his first season as owner, Andlauer told The Athletic he had “done a lot of learning” on the job while also steering the organization through challenging times: the forfeited draft pick, a gambling scandal that led to forward Shane Pinto receiving a 41-game suspension, and missing the playoffs.
Now, as he enters year three, it’s about ensuring the Senators maintain their postseason foothold in the present while planning for the future.
But his appetite is only growing.
“It’s like a family, you want the love from your family,” Andlauer says. “There’ll be times when your children hate you forever. But you care. As I say to our players, it’s the motto I’ve been using: You’ve got to work harder than your competition and you’ve got to care more. And truly care more.
“In my heart, I care. I care for the city. I care for doing what’s right.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Top photos: Arianne Bergeron / NHLI via Getty Images, André Ringuette / NHLI via Getty Images, Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)