In an effort to minimize the number of Maple Leaf fans at Ottawa Senators home games, the Senators recently sent an email to season-ticket holders.

The message told Senators subscribers they could get first dibs on additional tickets to Leaf games in Ottawa at a 20 per cent discount. But the access and price reduction came with a catch.

“We are asking you to ensure that the tickets are used by Senators fans and not re-sold to the general public,” the email said. “Any seats being re-sold will be subject to cancellation and loss of privileges with respect to future additional ticket pre-sales.”

The thrust of the campaign, the email later summarized, was to “not allow (tickets) to get into the hands of fans for our rivals.”

Such is the quality of sports-wise ideas emerging from the national capital region. Prime Minister Stephen Harper allegedly crafted his due-in-the-fall hockey book by spending most of a decade working each day for 15 minutes. The Senators’ marketing department appears to have mulled its brain wave to banish Leaf fans for all of 15 seconds.

At least Harper’s publisher enlisted the help of a great scribe, Roy MacGregor, to perform suspiciously vague “editorial services.” The Senators, apparently bereft of a wise set of eyes, are suddenly being exposed for their minor-league small-mindedness. “I hope it’s a joke,” said Rick Loveless, the Ottawa fan who dresses up for games as the red, furry “Sensquatch.”

Sorry, Mr. Bigfoot — just because it’s laughable doesn’t make it untrue. The Senators said a spokesperson was unavailable for comment and didn’t respond to a request for a copy of its email to subscribers. But the missive, obtained by the Star, outlined the Ottawa franchise’s plans for a campaign to “Take Back The Bank” — as in, home arena ScotiaBank Place.

“In past years, some of our key rivalry games have had many of the opposing team’s fans in attendance,” went the email. “We are taking steps to change that but we need your help.” Let us assure Senators fans that help is not on the way, and change is most certainly not going to come — at least, not for the better.

Now that a certain mob of blue-and-white-clad fanatics is aware it’s not wanted in Bytown on Feb. 23 — the next time their heroes are scheduled to visit the Senators — what are the odds they don’t descend in formidable numbers?

They’d best behave themselves. Leaf fans have been accused of rowdy behaviour on previous trips to Ottawa. The Senators, apparently responding to complaints from their fan base, have vowed to hire extra security for rivalry matches.

“It doesn’t burn anybody worse than me to see drunken guys walking around, bullying people,” Senators owner Eugene Melnyk told local reporters in the wake of a Leafs game about a year ago.

It all sounds preposterous coming from a franchise that was bankrupt a decade ago and plays in a middle-of-nowhere parking-lot rat shack where, by my eyewitness estimation, a half-hearted R.I.D.E. sweep could land great numbers of its car-bound faithful a roadside suspension or worse.

It’s disingenuous to suggest Leafs fans are the only ones overindulging, or that this issue is unique to the Battle of Ontario.

The Senators appear to have cribbed the anti-Leaf-fan undertaking from another fledgling sports franchise in another soulless government town. This past baseball season, the Washington Nationals embarked on a plan to keep fans of the Philadelphia Phillies away from Nationals home games. Recent Nationals-Phillies crowds in D.C. had been populated by two-thirds Philly fans, some of whom had brought along a sign: “Welcome to Citizens Bank Park South.”

The Nationals vowed to “Take Back the Park.” They tried to block sales of tickets from outside the capital area, just as the Arizona Cardinals had previously tried to limit out-of-state sales to stymie travelling fans of the Green Bay Packers, just as the Senators have previously attempted to block Leaf fans from purchasing ducats in the days when Toronto and Ottawa met regularly in the post-season.

Perhaps there are those in D.C. who will claim the Nationals’ initiative was a success. It certainly didn’t dissuade Phillies fans from travelling en masse.

“It inspired a lot of Philly fans — we made it a point of going that weekend,” said Kyle Scott, a Philly fan and blogger. “I don’t want to say it backfired (on the Nationals) — I think it’s a good way to rile up your own fans. But in the long run, to me, these sorts of things look a little Mickey Mouse. You wind up with everyone on the outside laughing at you, and your own fans, your hard-core fans, rolling their eyes.”

Certainly there are other franchises that have to deal with the enormity of a Maple Leafs fan base that comes attached to the club’s near-century-old heritage. As the man behind the Sensquatch pointed out, “Every arena in the league pretty much has Leaf fans.”

The Buffalo Sabres, for instance, have long lived with the influx of visiting humanity when Toronto’s NHL team arrives at First Niagara Center. But the Sabres aren’t considering a take-back-our-seats grouse-fest. For one thing, Sabres president Ted Black said, he can’t begrudge Buffalo fans who sell their tickets at a premium to Leafs fans; there are Buffalo loyalists who finance a portion of a season’s worth of seats doing just that.

“As long as the Leafs fans leave two points and their money at the door, we welcome them any time,” Black said with a laugh. “I’m not going to lie. When you lose, you hate it. . . . But I look at it as a positive. It’s almost like a collegiate atmosphere, an energy in the building that’s hard to replicate. For anyone that’s discouraged by it, the best thing we can do is make our tickets so valuable that people don’t want to sell them.”

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In other words, if the Senators are perturbed that so many Leaf fans boo Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson in his own barn, they need to win more games to woo more fans. Instead, they’re wasting time going to war against a little thing called the Internet. There’s a secondary market out there that’s unregulated and uncontrollable. Trying to direct of the flow of tickets is futile, not to mention insulting to Ottawa fans.

“I think it’s like standing in front of a wave with your arms out and saying, ‘Stop.’ It just doesn’t. You can’t do it,” said Black, speaking not of Ottawa’s situation but of Buffalo’s view of Leafs Nation. “People who want to follow their teams are going to find a way to get a ticket.”

Now that the Senators have made it known they’re attempting to stop an impending wave from Leafland — well, a week Saturday it’ll be fun to watch them try. All they can do now is call in the extra security, brace for the tsunami and buy earplugs for their beloved, beleaguered Alfie.

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