Mark Kastelic wanted to serve notice Sunday afternoon that his talk isn’t cheap.
The Ottawa Senators centre made no bones about the fact he’d been chirping his teammates about being the fastest skater and now he’s got the title to prove it.
The 6-foot-3 Kastelic found his stride during the Senators annual skills competition in front of 7,500 at the Canadian Tire Centre and covered the course in 14.072 seconds to win the title.
“I’ve always felt like I was a good skater and this was my chance to prove it to the fans,” Kastelic said with a smile. “It’s a good feeling, it’s for the fans first and foremost, but I think there’s a lot of internal competition that goes on around here.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to win that. I feel good.”
While many would have picked centre Tim Stutzle to win the title, he got tripped up a bit but still managed to finish with a time of 14.9 seconds.
“He probably could have beat me. Who knows? Once he stumbled I knew I had it locked up,” Kastelic said. “If we had to more agility, he’d beat me by a mile for sure.
“I’ve been talking about this for awhile so I’ve got to put my money where my mouth is. They told us a couple of days in advance that I’d be doing this so I talked it up a bit.”
The Senators have some players with good wheels.
Defenceman Jake Sanderson finished with a time of 14.240 while Parker Kelly (14.479) and Jake Lucchini (14.742) held their own.
BIG SHOOTER
Winger Drake Batherson won the hardest shot competition.
The last time he had it measured was during the club’s last skills competition in 2020 so the high-scoring winger was bound and determined to blast the puck more than 100 mph.
Batherson won the title with a blast of 103.9 mph. Defenceman Thomas Chabot was second at 102.7 mph and Kastelic was third at 101 mph.
“The last one here I was 98 mph in the competition so I said to the boys I wanted to beat 100 mph, and I was able to do that so it was fun” Batherson said.
He was actually a little surprised.
“I was,” he added. “I was just looking to get 100 mph. My first one was 96 mph and then I thought I’ve just got to take a little bigger wind-up.
“The big wind-up is kind of like golf. When you’re coming off a couple of bad holes, you kind of just want to step into one. That’s what I did, it was nothing crazy.
“It’s kind of like (Zdeno) Chara, he had the big wind up to hammer a few pucks and I was able to do the same thing.”
A FUN DAY
It was Team Brady Tkachuk that knocked off Team Chabot by a final score of 16-12, but the players enjoyed a step away from the day-to-day routine and it was a chance to shake off the 8-4 loss to the Seattle Kraken Saturday.
The fans had fun seeing the players showing off different aspects of the game and there were lots of kids in the stands with their parents.
“Sometimes after a loss like (Saturday) you tend to hang your head, and we’ve got to learn from it at the same time, but it’s nice to go out, have fun and forget about it,” Batherson said. “Now, we feel fresh in our minds for (Monday’s) game.”
The Senators will host the Nashville Predators to close out this home stand Monday night.
“This was fun for the fans and having the guy’s families around helps you flush the game last night pretty quick,” Kastelic said.
The proceeds from the afternoon were for a good cause with $50,000 donated to the Senators’ Charity Foundation and the NHLPA’s Goals and Dreams fund.
SPECIAL GUESTS
The Senators invited Ottawa natives Rebecca Leslie and Jamie Lee Rattray to participate in the event.
The two members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association took part along with eight minor hockey players from the area. Leslie skated with Team Tkachuk and Rattray was on Team Chabot.
Tkachuk and Leslie crossed paths at Boston University while he was in his freshman year.
“I think it’s neat,” said Tkachuk. “They had their all-star game here a couple of weeks ago and a lot of people came out to support them. Including (the two women) in our skills competition is good to show off for everybody.”
THE LAST WORDS
Stutzle is in a special place right now.
Not only did he record his second career hat-trick in the club’s 8-4 loss to the Seattle Kraken on Saturday, he also extended his point-scoring streak to seven games. He’s only one short of his career-high eight-game streak last season.
Stutzle has eight goals and 12 points in his latest span.
The fans did celebrate his three-goal effort by throwing hats on the ice.
“It’s definitely really nice of the fans,” Stutzle said. “But I would trade any of those goals for just getting the win. We were kind of on a roll and it’s unfortunate that it stopped. We’ve just got to get back at it and forget about that game.”
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