'I literally live in Kanata': TSN blackouts perplexing some local Ottawa Senators fans

Tim Stützle #18, Shane Pinto #12 and Claude Giroux #28 of the Ottawa Senators celebrate a goal against the Nashville Predators at Canadian Tire Centre. GETTY IMAGES

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Flipping the channel to the Ottawa Senators game has turned into a total crapshoot for some local hockey fans.

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Jamie Burns lives in Ashton, 16 minutes south of Canadian Tire Centre, and has dealt with inaccurate regional blackouts for two hockey seasons in a row.

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He streams through TSN Direct, but often when he tunes in to TSN5 to watch his beloved team, a dreaded message on the television screen reads: “The scheduled program is not available in your region.”

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At the core of the dilemma seems to be viewers’ internet protocol (IP) addresses incorrectly reading that they are located outside of the broadcasting region.

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Burns switched internet providers over the summer, ditching Bell for Starlink in hopes of better luck. It didn’t work. And he says TSN has been difficult to deal with in troubleshooting the issue.

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“Zero success,” he told the Ottawa Citizen. “TSN support confirmed my postal code is in-region but said their system reads my Starlink IP as Toronto and they can’t override it. They escalated it twice and promised a supervisor would email me twice. Neither email ever came.”

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So, what does he do when faced with a blackout minutes from puck drop?

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“Honestly? Illegal streams,” Burns admitted. “My cell data doesn’t work either. It maps me to Barrie for some reason. So, I pay for TSN and then have to pirate the game anyway. That’s my only option.”

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The Senators’ regional rights, defined by the National Hockey League, comprise of Eastern Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

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That includes the city of Kingston — we double-checked using the NHL’s local broadcaster guide — where Dave MacDonald has dealt with sporadic blackouts in recent years. He pays for cable through Bell and, when he turned on TSN’s broadcast of the Sens’ home opener against the Philadelphia Flyers last Thursday, he was denied viewership.

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MacDonald didn’t resort to pirate sites last week, but he has in the past.

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“If this happens one more time,” he told the Citizen, “I will be sailing the high seas for sure.”

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Much closer to the CTC — say, a five-minute drive — Griffin’s cable subscription didn’t allow them to watch the Sens-Flyers contest either.

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“I literally live in Kanata,” they said. “It doesn’t make sense at all.”

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On Tuesday night, Griffin sent the Citizen a photo of their TV screen during the first period of the Ottawa-St. Louis game. Blacked-out again.

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TSN has the rights to 53 regular-season Senators games during 2026-27. Including Thursday at home to the New York Islanders, there are 50 remaining on the broadcaster’s schedule.

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The Citizen reached out to Bell Media representatives over the weekend to ask four questions on the matter:

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Here’s the response we received on Tuesday: “We’re aware of blackout issues during live coverage of the Ottawa Senators on TSN5 affecting fans located within the team’s broadcast region. We take these matters seriously, and our TSN Help technical teams are available to assist viewers with escalating and resolving the issue.”