Ten years after his unforgettable ‘Hamburglar’ run, Andrew Hammond reflects on the spring whirlwind that carried the Ottawa Senators from the brink of elimination in 2015 to an unlikely postseason berth. In a one-on-one with The Hockey News Ottawa, the former Sens goalie joined us from his home in Michigan.
First, some time travel.
It’s February of 2015, and the Ottawa Senators are in the middle of a hopelessly mediocre road trip and season. Two months earlier, after an 11-11-5 start, they fired their head coach, Paul MacLean. Things haven’t improved since the firing—they’re exactly the same. The new coach, Dave Cameron, has just led them to the same 11-11-5 record that got MacLean fired.
It isn’t helping that starting goalie Craig Anderson has been out for almost a month with a deep bone bruise in his hand, leaving the net to Robin Lehner, who’s now hurt as well.
The Senators have just been thumped 6-3 by the Carolina Hurricanes, falling to a record of 22-23-10, 10 points out of the playoffs. Lehner left that game after a collision with teammate Clarke MacArthur, injuring both players and making way for Hammond, who’s recently been called up from AHL Binghamton.
As the Senators prepare to face the Montreal Canadiens, Hammond—now with just two career games on his NHL resume—is announced as the starting goalie.
And with that, the Hamburglar run was officially underway.
Hammond won that game and so many others, lifting the Sens from also-ran status to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. With masked Ottawa fans happily hurling hamburgers onto the ice after every win, The Hamburglar’s record that spring was a stunning 20-1-2 with a .941 save percentage and a 1.79 goals-against average.
GM Bryan Murray rewarded him to a three-year extension worth just over $4 million.
So that’s how it looked to Senators fans ten years ago. But we wanted to see how it all looked to Andrew Hammond, the centrepiece of one of the truly great stories in club history.
To Ottawa fans, he’ll always be the Hamburglar. But these days, as he lives and works in the Detroit area, raising a young family with his wife, Marlee, Hammond rarely gets that nickname anymore.
“My boss loves to bring it up now,” Hammond said. “It’s usually his lead when introducing me to people. But the Hamburglar? Not very often, I guess. The odd time.”
He’ll be hearing it a lot this week. The Senators are bringing him back to honour the 10th anniversary of the Hamburglar Run at Saturday’s home game against the San Jose Sharks. And Marlee has been having all kinds of nostalgic fun with it on social media.
Andrew is now just over two years into retirement and played for the Senators, Colorado Avalanche, Montreal Canadiens, and New Jersey Devils. While it isn’t the most obvious next chapter after a pro hockey career, it helped pave the way to a new career in medical sales.
“I always had that in the back of my head during my career,” Hammond said. “What am I going to do after? And I had a lot of friends in the medical sales world. And unfortunately for me, I was unlucky but lucky that I got injured a lot. I had to learn a lot about my body—more than probably most players do.
“And so, just from having some friends in that field, I always thought this was something I’d jump into after. And so that’s what I’m doing now. I work with ear, nose, and throat doctors, and really, I’m just trying to make sure that patients have the best outcome possible.”
Hammond certainly made sure the Senators had the best outcome possible in 2015, and that magical run has been well chronicled over the years. But what fans may not know as much about is the end of his time in Ottawa.
Hammond built up a lot of natural credit with head coach Dave Cameron that magical spring and was a solid backup to Anderson the following year. Hammond played 24 games, posting a save percentage of .914 and a goals-against average of 2.65. Not the stellar Hamburglar numbers from the year before, but they were close to Anderson’s (.923, 2.49) and still very good.
But at the end of the 2015-16 season, Cameron was fired and that’s when Guy Boucher came onto the scene.
“I knew at that point I was on the way out,” Hammond said. “I started to hear from guys that (Boucher) was reaching out to them, making introductions. I think he reached out to 21 of the 23 players on our roster. The only ones he didn’t reach out to were me and Chris Wideman.
“I get back to Ottawa (fall of 2016) and the first meeting I have with him, it was pretty apparent that I wasn’t going to play very much. I think he mentioned to me that his goal for Craig was to play over 75 games. I may be a little bit off, but it was definitely around 70. It ended up being almost a month into the season when I didn’t play.”
By October 28th, after mostly sitting on the bench for the first month, Hammond finally got a start in Calgary and suffered a pulled groin. He went on to have multiple injuries that season, including a high ankle sprain and a hip injury that required surgery.
That summer, Hammond began hearing repeatedly that he was getting traded, and it was becoming mutually clear that a change of address would be beneficial for both sides. But it didn’t happen—not in the summer. Then, he was held out of the preseason because GM Pierre Dorion told him a trade was close.
So Hammond didn’t get to play in that preseason, didn’t get traded, and was sent down to Belleville, where he suddenly wasn’t playing again due to the logjam of goalies down there—guys like Marcus Hogberg, Chris Driedger, and Daniel Taylor.
“So I’m thinking, ‘Okay, I’m buried here. I’m just here to ride out my contract,’” Hammond said.
In early November, former assistant GM Randy Lee called with a good-news-bad-news scenario. The Sens had traded Hammond to the Colorado Avalanche as part of the Matt Duchene deal, but his Belleville saga wasn’t over. Because of the Avs’ minor league setup, they didn’t have room for him on the farm either, so he was staying on assignment with the B-Sens.
No longer affiliated with the organization, his stock fell even further in Belleville. Despite talk of open competition, Hammond says a couple of weeks after the trade, they began to leave him at home for all the road trips. Fortunately, Hammond eventually got called up to the Avalanche, where he had some brief success, appearing in three 2018 playoff games for the Avs.
That ended his run in Ottawa/Belleville, which reads like a totally different story from the Hamburglar run less than three years earlier. Such is life in the unpredictable world of pro hockey.
But that phenomenal spring of 2015 will always be a special memory for Hammond, and the fans in Ottawa were a big part of it.
“I think ‘grateful’ is probably the one word that I can think of,” Hammond said. “I can’t think of another city that wrapped their arms around the team the way they did. And early on, no one knew we were going to make the playoffs. It was pretty evident early on that it wouldn’t have mattered if we made the playoffs—they were just so proud of the effort we were putting forth. I think that’s really special, and that’s what I’m grateful for.
Hammond was also grateful he could set aside the hype and outside noise and continue to be himself.
“Over a two-week period, my life changed. But at the same time, it didn’t. I didn’t feel like all of a sudden I was getting some fancy steak that I didn’t know existed. I think of myself as a Midwest person. I mean, if you offered me two things, I’d probably choose beer and chicken wings.”
Steak and chicken wings? You’ve changed, Hamburglar. You’ve changed.
Speaking of burgers, there were rumours and reports back in the day that McDonald’s had set Hammond up with a special food-for-life gift card. They may have done just that, but Hammond doesn’t know for sure.
“I was given maybe five or six gift cards, worth maybe $3,500. But I was also given a framed picture of me holding up the hamburger. And below it is a McDonald’s credit card with my name on it. But it was in the frame, so I’ve never taken it out.
“I don’t know if there’s any value on it or if it’s a prop. So I still can’t answer it. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the answer. I’ll say this: There’s a little maple leaf on it, so if the card does work, it probably only works in Canada.”
Maybe Hammond will bring it to Ottawa on Saturday night and throw a ceremonial burger or two on the ice for old-time’s sake. Ten years later, in a seven-year playoff drought, the Sens could sure use some of that Hamburglar magic right now.
By Steve Warne
The Hockey News Ottawa
This article is from The Hockey News Ottawa. For more Sens coverage all season long, be sure to bookmark THN Ottawa.
