William Eklund is set to miss 10-to-12 weeks after surgery on a torn ankle tendon, a setback that takes the Ottawa Senators’ 23-year-old winger out for most of the early season. He was hurt last week in the first period of the Senators’ 2-1 victory over the Flyers and later needed help off the ice.
The injury matters now because Eklund had already started to settle in during his first season with the Ottawa Senators, with one goal and one assist in four regular season games. He was acquired from the Sharks in the off-season as part of a deal that sent the ninth overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft the other way, and Ottawa brought him in expecting speed, skill and immediate depth on the wing.
The play itself showed how quickly a routine rush turned into a long absence. Eklund was chasing the puck into the corner in the offensive zone when Simon Benoit delivered the hit. He stayed down in pain, was attended to by the team’s training staff and then left with assistance from two teammates, unable to put pressure on his left leg. A torn ankle tendon is not a bruise that clears in a few shifts; surgery and a recovery window measured in weeks usually means the player is dealing with damage serious enough to keep weight off the joint and force a full reset before skating returns.
That loss lands on a team that has kept winning through the injuries. Ottawa is off to a 5-2-0 start despite missing Eklund, Andre Burakovsky, Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub, and the line between resilience and strain is getting thinner. Burakovsky made his season debut on Saturday, Zub is set to play Thursday and Sanderson is close to returning, but Eklund’s timeline stretches much farther than the others and removes one of the club’s newest pieces for a sizable chunk of the schedule.
The open question is not whether Eklund will return, but how the Senators bridge the gap until he does. With 10-to-12 weeks to wait, Ottawa must keep pace without a winger who had 15 goals and 53 points in 78 games with the Sharks last season. The early results suggest the group can survive short-term absences. Eklund’s absence will test whether it can do that for much longer.
