"National capitals? Sergei Gonchar has known a few.

Washington, D.C., was Gonchar's first NHL home, after he spent two seasons in Moscow, with the famed Dynamo club. And his hometown of Chelyabinsk is capital of the Russian region by the same name.

Only in Canada's capital, as a new member of the Ottawa Senators defence corps, has Gonchar and his family truly seen the light.

They arrived in Ottawa this summer, Gonchar, his wife, Ksenia, and two young daughters. The youngest is little more than a year.

"She doesn't know what's going on," Gonchar says.

The older daughter, Natalie, soon to be 8, was missing her friends from Pittsburgh and worried about how she would manage in a new city. After settling into a home they rented, the Gonchars toured the city, saw the usual sights, the Rideau Canal, Parliament Hill, but it was the popular Sound and Light Show on the Hill that helped them connect, made them feel they were in a good place.

"We went three or four times," the soft-spoken Gonchar says.

Within a few days, Natalie had made new friends, and now she's happy in a school just around the corner from her home.

"I think the more we're going to be here, the more they're going to like it," Gonchar says of his family. Hockey players can relax once their family is content in a new arrangement.

Still, Natalie isn't the only Gonchar finding her way in a new group. After 10 seasons with the Capitals (plus 15 games as a Boston Bruin) and five seasons with the Pittsburgh Penguins, Sergei is still settling into his environment.

"It's not a one day process," Gonchar says, after a practice session on Tuesday, for players not taking part in the Tuesday-Wednesday pre-season games in Toronto against the Maple Leafs."