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Reaction on social media and elsewhere has been loud and, by and large, angry, as fans have taken to chat rooms and Twitter to vent. Late Friday morning, Karlsson tweeted, “Thank you Ottawa for making this my home. All my love to the fans, community and former teammates. You will be dearly missed. On to the next chapter now. Shark nation, I’m coming for you.” That message prompted such responses as, “When you win the cup, please come and whack (Sens owner Eugene) Melnyk over the head with it,””Love you EK ❤️ thank you so much for everything you’ve done for the team and the city. We didn’t want this 😣,” and “We all wish you the best and hope that, when you win the cup, you will drive up and down Melnyk’s street with it all day long.”

Some, like Shaila Anwar, took action. Within about five minutes of the trade announcement, the public servant and co-host of TSN1200’s That’s What She Said, whose Twitter handle is “I am from Erik Karlsson’s Forever Home,” called the club to cancel season tickets she has had since 1994.

“Marketing a sports team is all about selling hope or selling championships,” Anwar said Friday. “Those are the two things that get people to care.

“But what are the Senators going to sell now? They can’t sell hope, and, as much as they may say this was a hockey trade, they got nothing to replace front-line talent, a two-time Norris trophy-winner who carried the franchise, and the city and his hockey team, on his broken leg and almost got them in the Stanley Cup finals — a team that nobody would have picked to get that far.”