One of the most highly anticipated home openers in Ottawa Senators history lived up to the hype Tuesday night.

The Sens defeated the Boston Bruins in a 7-5 barn burner in front of a raucous crowd at the Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata, Ontario.

Franchise legend Daniel Alfredsson got the crowd fired up before the game started. "Alfie, Alfie, Alfie," chants rained down from the crowd as the former captain conducted the ceremonial faceoff.

"It was outstanding. It was playoff (like) and just the noise when we scored early," head coach D.J. Smith said postgame, according to Postmedia's Bruce Garrioch. "The noise from Alfredsson carried into the opening period."

The much-awaited contest stemmed from a busy offseason in Canada's capital in which the club acquired marquee forwards Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux and veteran goaltender Cam Talbot to support its young, burgeoning core.

The excitement drew 19,811 fans to a building that's capacity is listed at 18,652, marking the team's first sold-out home opener since 2015. The Senators ranked last in the league in both average attendance and capacity percentage in 2021-22 and 2019-20.

"That was pretty amazing. I don't think in all the rinks I've felt that excited for a game before," captain Brady Tkachuk said. "A credit to all the fans that came out because that was an amazing experience."

He added: "If you can't get excited for that game, that energy, that crowd, I don't know what's wrong with you."

The Senators clearly fed off the crowd, jumping to an early 3-0 lead, including two goals in the opening 3:09 of the game. But the Bruins refused to go away, tying things up at 3-3 and coming within a goal of Ottawa's 6-5 lead at one point. Ultimately, the Sens hung on for their first victory of the campaign.

"The fans got their money's worth," forward Drake Batherson said. "It was a crazy game. We got two points. We could have played better defensively, but it's the third game of the year, we're going to get better, and it's just nice to get the win."

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The Washington Capitals have signed unrestricted free-agent winger Sonny Milano to a one-year contract worth $750,000, the team announced Sunday.

Washington will place Milano on waivers for assignment to the AHL's Hershey Bears.

The 26-year-old was in training camp with the Calgary Flames on a professional tryout, but he didn't make the team.

Milano spent last season with the Anaheim Ducks, tallying 14 goals and 20 assists in 66 games. His underlying numbers were stellar, too:

Selected 16th overall by the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2014, Milano has registered 36 goals and 45 assists in 197 career NHL games between Columbus and Anaheim.

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The Edmonton Oilers have only played two games this season, but head coach Jay Woodcroft is already concerned about their performance following a 4-3 loss to the Calgary Flames on Saturday.

"We're not near where we're capable of," the Edmonton bench boss said postgame of his team's five-on-five play after the Oilers dug themselves an early hole for the second straight contest.

"I'm not going to put a percentage on it or anything like that, but certainly there are areas we've got to get better at, and we've got to get better at (them) quickly," Woodcroft continued. "I think the teams that are finding some early success in this young year, they're the ones that are a little bit cleaner and a little bit more assertive in their own end."

Leon Draisaitl pointed to his club's slow starts as an area in which it needs to improve.

"You can't spot a team three goals in back-to-back nights, so it's something that we have to address, obviously," Draisaitl said. Woodcroft pulled goaltender Jack Campbell after he allowed four goals in under 11 minutes to begin the contest, but Draisaitl was quick to shift any blame away from the netminder.

"No, that's on us. That has nothing to do with him," the star forward said. "He was amazing the other night. This is 100% on us."

Edmonton fell behind by three goals Saturday for the second time in four nights after overcoming a 3-0 deficit in a 5-3 win over the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday. This time, the Oilers trailed 4-1 after 20 minutes in a game that was far more lopsided than its final score suggested.

The Flames held a 16-11 edge in shots on goal after the first period, but the underlying numbers showed it was much worse for Edmonton. Calgary dominated the opening frame in terms of Corsi For percentage (62.96 to 37.04), scoring chances for percentage (58.33 to 31.67), and expected goals for percentage (70.6 to 29.4), according to Natural Stat Trick.

Flames forward Mikael Backlund was left wide-open in the slot when he buried the game's first goal less than two minutes in. Under seven minutes later, Oilers defenseman Brett Kulak fell over and allowed Nazem Kadri to score uncontested. Andrew Mangiapane added Calgary's fourth tally less than a few minutes after that.

Edmonton is off until Tuesday night when the team will host the Buffalo Sabres before facing the Carolina Hurricanes, St. Louis Blues, and Pittsburgh Penguins in consecutive contests.

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Eric Zweig, the hockey author and historian, was 10 years old the Christmas that his parents gave him a miniature replica of the Stanley Cup. The words inscribed on the trophy are tiny, but he was able to read them as a kid.

"That was the first time I'd ever heard of the Kenora Thistles," Zweig said.

The gift stoked a lifelong fascination with the subject of Zweig's latest book. "Engraved in History: The Story of the Stanley Cup Champion Kenora Thistles" introduces readers to an obscure champ - the speedy band of childhood friends from northern Ontario who claimed the title in 1907.

The Thistles represented a mining and lumber town of a few thousand people that was an outlier even in its era. With almost no exceptions, every Stanley Cup winner going back to 1893 hails from a current NHL city. Powerhouse lineups from Ottawa and Montreal traded Cup victories, except for when Kenora won it in enthralling matchups that redefined what hockey could look like.

"So much about hockey today, even the up-tempo style of play, can be traced to that (1907) Stanley Cup over a century ago," Ron MacLean wrote in the foreword to "Engraved in History," which was released nationally this week via Rat Portage Press.

MacLean added, "No story is smaller, which of course is what makes it so big."

The Thistles leveraged the sport's bygone quirks to their advantage. They were an amateur team whose top player, Tommy Phillips, lost the ends of three fingers in a lumbering mishap, yet he remained brilliant at stickhandling and shooting. Forward passes were banned, but rather than dump the puck and punt possession under pressure, Kenora's defensemen preferred to hold onto it to orchestrate a rush.

The Thistles faced Manitoba competition because of Kenora's proximity to Winnipeg, a shipping hub that sent Prairie grain eastward at the turn of the century and moved farm equipment in the other direction. Winters were frigid, so the region's many good athletes were always on the ice. Phillips and his teammates rowed in the offseason, enhancing their endurance at a time when substitutions were rare.

"Art Ross would talk about it a lot: Tommy Phillips was the kind of guy who could be just as fresh at the end of 60 minutes as he was when the game started," Zweig said. "Their fitness levels were better, and it was hard for people to keep up. And even if they tired out - by then, you're tired, we're tired, but we've already scored four goals."

The Stanley Cup was awarded in challenge series back then: The holder was compelled to face league champions from elsewhere in Canada both during and at the end of the season. The Thistles got to vie for it in 1903 and 1905, falling to the dynastic Ottawa Silver Seven on both occasions.

Ottawa was a skilled, violent squad led by Frank McGee, the Alex Ovechkin of his era to Phillips' Sidney Crosby. McGee was blind in his left eye and famed for scoring 14 goals in an earlier Cup game. He jabbed and broke Si Griffis' nose in the second Thistles series, then tallied a hat trick and the late winner in the deciding contest.

Knowing they were fast enough to trouble top teams, the Thistles added ringers from a Manitoba rival - Ross and fellow future NHLer "Bad" Joe Hall - to try to dethrone the Montreal Wanderers in January 1907. They missed a connecting train en route to the series that wound up being rear-ended and wrecked.

Spared disaster, Phillips guaranteed victory in the series to a Winnipeg sportswriter, then netted Kenora's four goals in a Game 1 win. One was sensational. Per a newspaper report that Zweig found, Phillips sidestepped most of the Wanderers while crossing the ice with the puck and wired a pinpoint shot from the right wing.

Game 2 was electric. Montreal erased a 6-2 deficit before Griffis, carrying the puck from end to end, forced two saves and passed to Roxy Beaudro for the tap-in that clinched the title for the Thistles.

"I'm sure they just thought: 'Oh, we are the champions.' Maybe they got cocky and sat on (the lead) a little bit," Zweig said. "But it must have been tremendously exciting. I would love to have been at that game."

Kenora's reign as Cup victor lasted nine weeks. Ross and Hall returned to the Brandon Wheat City club, but the Thistles swept Brandon in the Manitoba playoffs in mid-March. Montreal visited the next week and outscored Kenora in a two-game rematch, prevailing on aggregate to head home with the chalice.

"(The Thistles) played four games against the Wanderers and won three of them. But that's only enough to win a series and lose a series," Zweig said. "If that's a best-of-seven series, they're up 3-1 at that point. Which never gets talked about, because it just wasn't a possibility at that time."

The dissolution of the Thistles was imminent. Most guys on the roster quit hockey or left town in the offseason, hoping to make career headway in a bigger city. A scarcely recognizable Kenora lineup lost by double digits in the 1907-08 season opener. The team folded without playing another league game.

More than a century later, Zweig compares the Thistles to the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s. An unstoppable offense powered that franchise to several championships before it traded Wayne Gretzky for cash.

"Edmonton's not small like Kenora's small, but by NHL standards, it's tiny," Zweig said. "It's a small, sort of underdog town playing a style of hockey that people haven't seen before. And winning. And then going: Well, we can't really afford to keep this team together."

The arc of Kenora's rise and fall raises what-ifs. Had the Thistles matured quickly enough to beat Ottawa in 1905, Zweig said, they might have held onto the Cup for three seasons. Instead, they inspired the concept of a trade deadline: Cup trustees in 1908 banned the last-minute additions of ringers like Ross and Hall.

The Thistles didn't endure, but the prize they won did.

"The Super Bowl trophy is a cool-looking trophy, but it has no real history and they make a new one every year. The World Series trophy is a kind of dopey-looking trophy and they make a new one every year," Zweig said. "But the Stanley Cup, even though it's been remodeled and redone and there are different versions of it, in a sense, it's the very same trophy that goes back to 1893 and 1907."

"The history of this game is something we in Canada still attach ourselves to," he added. "It's all part of the link. And I think the fact that one small town did win is a neat part in that link."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

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Warning: Story contains graphic content

The Tampa Bay Lightning suspended defenseman Ian Cole indefinitely Sunday after a woman said he sexually assaulted her when she was a minor and groomed her over a four-year period.

"The Tampa Bay Lightning is aware of the allegations against player Ian Cole and are cooperating fully with the NHL on an investigation," the team said in a statement.

"Our organization takes these allegations very seriously. While we continue to gather more details, we have decided to suspend Ian Cole pending the results of an investigation. No members of the organization, including players, will comment further at this time."

On Friday, a Twitter user with the name Emily Smith posted a statement saying Cole sexually abused her, including sexually assaulting her when she was a minor. She said she later discovered that Cole had slept with another minor at her former high school. Smith added that one of Cole's former NHL teammates told her that the defenseman had bragged about the assault to his teammates.

Cole released a statement via his agent later Sunday evening.

"I take the allegations made against me today in an anonymous tweet very seriously," the statement reads. "I completely deny these allegations and will fully cooperate with the NHL and the Tampa Bay Lightning, their officials and legal departments in the forthcoming investigation.

"I look forward to clearing my name and demonstrating to the NHL and the Tampa Bay Lightning that these allegations are unfounded. I will have no further comment until the NHL's investigation concludes."

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said earlier Sunday that the league is aware of the allegations and is looking into them, according to The Athletic's Katie Strang.

Cole, 33, is entering his 13th NHL season with his seventh organization.

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