Another day, another NHL star asks out of the only franchise he has known.And to the shock of no one, it’s an American player from a Canadian team headed to one of the league’s preferred destinations in the southern United States.In losing captain Brady Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers for a few draft picks over the weekend, the Ottawa Senators followed in a growing NHL trend. What feels different here compared to other cases of stars wanting to leave Canadian cities — Quinn Hughes from Vancouver; Johnny Gaudreau, Matthew Tkachuk and Rasmus Andersson from Calgary; Nikolaj Ehlers and Jacob Trouba from Winnipeg; and Mitch Marner from Toronto, among others — is that Brady Tkachuk’s now-former team appears on the rise.In fact, the Senators were seemingly well-positioned to do some real damage in the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference in the coming years, given the age of their core and how well they played in the second half. Even their disappointing first-round loss to the Carolina Hurricanes consisted of four tight, hard-fought games, a better showing than other clubs managed against the eventual Stanley Cup champions.Brady Tkachuk to the Florida PanthersSean McIndoe and Sean GentillePrior to the Tkachuk trade, Ottawa’s odds of winning the Cup next season weren’t dramatically lower (18 to 1) than Florida’s (11 to 1). Now the Panthers have been boosted up into a tie for second (with the Colorado Avalanche) behind only the Hurricanes, and the Senators have fallen back to 22 to 1, closer to the middle of the pack.Perhaps Senators GM Steve Staios can now flip the acquired picks — three first-rounders and a second — for enough help to fully replace Tkachuk. And perhaps it’s a blessing that Tkachuk asked out when he did, with two years left on his deal and his value this high.But in what figures to be a very complex NHL offseason with one of the worst free agent classes in recent history, competition for top talent will be fierce. And increasingly, stars are using their no-trade and no-movement clauses not only to leave Canadian teams but also to block the possibility of going to one at all.The whys behind players not wanting to play in Canada are varied and hotly debated, especially north of the border. I laid out some of the most prominent causes when we were in the midst of yet another Sun Belt Cup Final, and they boil down to a combination of media attention, weather, taxes and even politics.The other key factor is that Canadian teams have struggled to consistently contend in the NHL’s salary cap era, having not won a championship in 33 years and appearing in the Cup Final roughly half as many times as they should have based on their representation in the league. But the Senators struggled for years to get to this point, on the cusp of contention, and Tkachuk — drafted No. 4 in 2018 — was a central part of that long process.To have him pull the plug at 26 years old does not fit with the notion out there that the Canadian teams need to be better on the ice to keep their top players. It’s telling, too, that when today’s stars give their list of preferred destinations — including Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin recently — a team like the Montreal Canadiens, a franchise filled with young talent that just reached the 2026 Eastern Conference finals, isn’t among the choices.