"If we keep answering those, we'll answer about Brady all season long," says Thomas Chabot of Tkachuk's departure.

The Ottawa Senators have tried to move on from Brady Tkachuk, but his shadow still lingers over the franchise.

It has been 94 days since Steve Staios, the Senators president of hockey operations and general manager, gave the club’s former captain his wish and traded him to the Florida Panthers so he could play with his brother, Matthew.

Since then, hardly a day has passed without Tkachuk’s name coming up somewhere in this city, either in conversation or in questions directed at the Senators.

The subject reared its ugly head again on Tuesday when Michael Andlauer, the club’s majority owner, told TSN’s Pierre LeBrun before the National Hockey League’s board of governors’ meetings in New York that Tkachuk’s decision was influenced by his family.

Andlauer specifically pointed the finger at Matthew and Tkachuk’s father, Keith, a former NHL player, for the role they played in Brady’s decision to ask for a trade.

“Blood is thicker than water and let’s just say that his father and his brother got in his kitchen,” Andlauer said. “Ultimately, the decision was made to go and play with his brother.

“It’s a decision that was out of our control to a certain degree. But you have to want to play for Ottawa. And right to the end, our fans were behind Brady, even after Team USA won gold. I have no doubt in my mind.”

Andlauer was doing the right thing by standing up for the franchise and these were his first public comments about L’Affaire Tkachuk.

He has shown in his 36 months on the job that he’s always going to come to the defence of his team. Andlauer isn’t afraid to shoot from the hip and you can argue all you want about whether he should have opened that can of worms, but fans of the Senators loved it.

Those are Andlauer’s customers and they were fully on board with him throwing the Tkachuk family under the bus.

But the whole Tkachuk topic is getting tiresome for the players who have been left behind in Ottawa. Sooner or later, they’re just not going to dignify the questions about Tkachuk with a response.

“I saw the quote,” alternate captain Thomas Chabot said before the Senators faced the Toronto Maple Leafs in split-squad games on Wednesday at the Canadian Tire Centre and Scotiabank Arena. “If we keep answering those, we’ll answer about Brady all season long.”

Chabot is right. Tkachuk’s departure will likely be a topic of conversation in these parts until the Senators host the Panthers on Oct. 21 in his first game back in Ottawa.

It says here that Tkachuk will be booed when he’s introduced in the starting lineup and every time he touches the puck. The reaction to the video tribute during the first television timeout will be mixed at best and we’d be willing to bet a No. 7 jersey, or two, will land on the ice.

That will allow everybody to move on and turn the page.

Until then, the Senators would rather deflect all questions regarding Tkachuk’s departure from Ottawa to the man himself.

“The only person who can answer that question is Brady,” Chabot said. “We don’t know what he was thinking and we don’t know what it was.

“Like I’ve always said, I stand by his decision. That was his own. It’s his career. I respect it. We don’t hold anything against Brady.”

Tkachuk is the only one who can explain why he didn’t want to make his home in Ottawa anymore and demanded a trade. He had a list of four teams, but in the end, that list started and ended with playing for the Panthers.

The Senators want to focus on the task at hand and that’s getting ready for the start of the season against the Leafs on Oct. 3. They will wrap up the pre-season Saturday with split-squad games against the Montreal Canadiens and then get ready to start the new campaign.

“We want to be with the team here. We’ve got what we’ve got here,” Chabot said. “We’ve got guys that are excited for the season, and that’s all we focus on.

“To be completely fair with you guys, we don’t really talk about (Tkachuk’s departure) inside with the guys. It’s not really a subject of conversation. Like I said, Brady would give you a better answer, but we don’t hold anything against him.”

Let’s be honest: Nobody in Ottawa is waiting for another explanation from anyone with the Senators. Nobody wants to ask Chabot about this again. And nobody is waiting for another debate on sports radio.

They’re waiting for Oct. 21.

When Tkachuk steps onto the ice at the Canadian Tire Centre wearing a Panthers jersey for the first time, he’ll hear exactly how people in Ottawa feel about his demand to move on.

After that, there won’t be much left to say.

At some point, this city has to stop looking backward.