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Ex-Blue Jacket on Columbus: “It wasn’t a great atmosphere”

Prior to being acquired by Ottawa on July 1, Marc Methot spent his entire six-year NHL career in Columbus. While he has plenty of good things to say about the city and its fans, he also recently told Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun playing hockey in Ohio was challenging at times.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it: I have the utmost respect for the fans there,” Methot said. “It’s just sometimes during the week we wouldn’t get a packed house and we’d be playing a team like Chicago or Detroit and it sounded like half the building were from those markets or were fans of the other team.

“We were losing a lot of games, people weren’t happy and it wasn’t a great atmosphere.”

Talk about your reversals of fortune.

Methot, 27, is an Ottawa native set to join a young Senators team that defied expectations last year by making the playoffs. They pushed the Eastern Conference’s top-seeded Rangers to seven games in the opening round and it looks as though Methot -- known as a positionally-sound, defensive defenseman -- could get a chance to replace Filip Kuba as Erik Karlsson’s blueline partner.

The former London Knight sounded excited to get things going with the Sens.

“You can absolutely call it a fresh start,” Methot said. “I’m going to get a chance to play in front of my family and friends. I don’t think the situation could be any better.”