Stephen Halliday may not start the season with the Ottawa Senators, but he’ll be only a phone call away.
The road to putting himself on the radar screen begins on Saturday.
The Senators have depth down the middle of the ice heading into training camp, which gets underway next Wednesday at the Canadian Tire Centre, so the 23-year-old Halliday is in tough to make it to opening night.
But as the Senators open the Prospects Challenge against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Bell Centre in Montreal, the 6-foot-4 Halliday can serve notice that he’s ready to make the next step.
Steve Staios, the Senators president of hockey operations and general manager, along with coach Travis Green and several members of the staff, will be on hand in Montreal to evaluate how Halliday and the rest of the newcomers look with the first exhibition game set for next Sunday.
Halliday, who spent all of last season with the club’s American Hockey League affiliate in Belleville, knows it’s up to him to make a big impression, which isn’t hard to do when you’re 6-foot-4 with strong skills.
“It’s an opportunity to get better,” Halliday said on Thursday. “It’s a chance to show Travis, Steve, and all the coaching staff what I’ve worked on. This tournament is a good opportunity to show that I’ve made those strides.
“I got a lot stronger. We have a better team this year, so I think we should have some good results this year.”
A fourth-round selection in the 2022 National Hockey League draft, Halliday turned pro after two years at Ohio State University and was a solid addition during Belleville’s playoff run in the spring of 2024.
He finished with 19 goals and 51 points in 71 games with Belleville last season, and spent the summer working with Matt Nichol, the club’s director of player health and performance, at his facility in Toronto.
The Senators wanted Halliday to get stronger and he has.
“They challenged me to get stronger in the gym,” Halliday said. “There is no one better to go to than Matt Nichol. He’s world-renowned for hockey-specific training.”
He also worked on his skating with Sam Gagner, the club’s head of player development, and skating coach Shelley Kettles. Gagner, who finished the season as a player in Belleville last year, went down to Toronto twice a week to spend time working with Halliday.
“He’s a big body with a ton of skill, so a package like that, there’s high upside at the NHL level,” Gagner said. “He’s continuing to add layers to his game, where he’s winning battles, and he’s becoming more urgent, and that’s what we want to see from him.
“He had a good year in the American League last year, kind of his first full year of pro hockey, which is a difficult transition. He handled it really well. But there’s another level for him to get to. I really enjoyed working with him. He’s a great kid who wants to get better. He loves the game. We’re excited about him as well.”
Belleville coach David Bell is confident in Halliday.
“The biggest thing he’s doing, and he tried to do it there, was embracing physicality,” Bell said. “It’s great that he can go to quiet areas of the ice and find soft areas, but at some point, he needs to engage physically and create his own space, and create time and space to make his little plays.
“He’s doing that. Today, he engaged the guys. He didn’t shy away. He went and dug in and made his own space. So I think that’s the evolution of Stephen. That’s really good.”
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You just get the sense that if Halliday can continue on his current path he’ll suit up for the Senators someday. It could be this season as a callup if the club runs into injury trouble or down the road after he has had more time to work on his game with Bell and his staff.
There just seems to be so much potential with this player.
“He sees the ice extremely well. He sees players and he’s very deceptive with where he’s going to put the puck, whether it’s a head fake or his eyes or even his stick,” Bell said.
“He’s a big body with long reach that can drag a checker one way and put a puck the other way. Guys always have to be ready to get him the puck. He puts pucks into areas and that makes him pretty elite at that skill.”
The Senators will close out the two-game tourney on Sunday against the Winnipeg Jets at 7 p.m.