Matthew Tkachuk: “I Don’t Feel Like I’m Close to Hitting My Prime Yet”
Even after leading the Florida Panthers to a Stanley Cup and making a dent in MVP races, Matthew Tkachuk believes he still has yet to hit his prime.
When Matthew Tkachuk played in his 600th NHL game on Saturday, it gave him a chance to look back on all he has accomplished in his career.
“It feels like it should be 1,000, but he is so young that it should only be 400, right?” Coach Paul Maurice said of the 26-year-old. “He’s played 600 highly-impactful games in the NHL at a very young age. I forget how young he is. He is a truly unusual player.“
The Florida Panthers superstar has scored 222 goals and 589 points in those 600 games, making two All-Star teams and finishing third in Hart Trophy voting in 2022-23 after putting up 40 goals and 109 points in his first season in South Florida.
But the accolade Tkachuk had the most fun looking back at?
The Stanley Cup championship that Tkachuk had such a heavy hand in leading the Panthers to last year.
He said that might with his trademark grin.
But he believes he can do even more than just that.
“It’s crazy, because I don’t even feel like I’m even close to hitting my prime yet and I’m at 600 [games] right now,” Tkachuk said. “It’s just flying by, and I’m 26 years old, so for me to hit this at this age, I think is a pretty cool accomplishment and it just makes you reflect when you hit something like this, on how fast time has gone and just how many great players you have been able to play with.”
Tkachuk has set the bar for himself pretty high in that regard.
He led the Panthers in points (21) and assists (16) during their 24-game run to the Stanley Cup last season. He has 17 goals and 46 points in 44 games since Florida started the first of its two consecutive runs to the Cup Final. His points are the most by a player not associated with the freakishness that is Connor McDavid.
But that’s not what makes Tkachuk who he is.
He is an emotional leader who has the swagger to show up in the big moments — the overtime winner in Game 5 when the Panthers were trailing the Boston Bruins 3-1 in Round 1 of 2023, the goal he scored with less than five seconds to go in regulation to send the Panthers to the Cup Final, the game-tying goal in Game 3 of the 2023 Cup Final he scored with a fractured sternum.
That is Matthew Tkachuk, and if there is another level to him, then more moments like that are to be expected.
“There are some guys like Sam Reinhart that can give you just about every system, every detail that happened in the game. What Matthew is brilliant at is the emotional parts of the game,” Maurice said.
“When it’s starting to slip on you, when you got them on the run, when a hit needs to happen, when a scrum needs to happen, when both need to happen, when both of those don’t need to happen — he can feel that game. He can feel the temperature of a game and he is wired right into that. So, different lenses on how they view the game, but equally elite.”