Matthew Tkachuk is Exactly What Hockey Needed Right Now
The flashy, yet physical star has breathed a whole new personality into the game, and it is shining at the right time.
When Florida Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk dropped the gloves with Tampa Bay Lighting forward Brandon Hagel to kick off Saturday night’s thriller of a USA-Canada game, the entire hockey world is watching.
And it added a whole new level of intrigue going into Thursday night’s rematch between the United States and Canada in the Four Nations Face-Off’s Championship Game.
After Tkachuk dropped the gloves three seconds into the game — with his brother, Brady, and New York Rangers star JT Miller joining in within the next six seconds — eyeballs across the continent were glued to their TVs.
When it was all said and done and the Amerians skated away with a 3-1 victory over the Canadians, 10.1 million people across North America tuned into the game.
Those numbers cleared any game outside of the Stanley Cup Final over the past decade-plus and exceeded these two teams’ last match-up in best-on-best international play at the World Cup of Hockey by 203 percent.
And all 10.1 million people got a taste of that special sauce that Tkachuk brings to the game.
When the casual hockey fan thinks of hockey, they think of the fights and the physicality.
That was exactly why the Twitter world was screaming its lungs out while Tkachuk and Hagel — and eventually Brady and Matthew’s Panthers teammate Sam Bennett — were throwing haymakers at each other.
Even when the fights died down, that energy was not lost in the game.
Both teams forechecked hard, the physicality was upped to the Nth degree and it genuinely felt like a meaningful playoff game.
And it all came to ahead during a disastrous NBA All-Star weekend where it was clear the players did not care.
Tkachuk started the fire there, and it helped the NHL strike when the iron was hot.
At a time when casual sports fans have granted their attention to the NBA, Tkachuk helped stick his flag in the ground and show people how great hockey truly is.
But what makes Tkachuk special is that he has the skill and the talent to go with the physicality.
He has some of the best hands in the league — hands responsible for 88 goals and 254 points in his 211 games as a member of the Panthers — and he has the swagger in the clutch to go with it.
Tkachuk’s six game-winning goals in the Panthers’ back-to-back Stanley Cup Final appearances speak for himself, but he has made himself very known for excelling when the dramatics are heightened late in games. If you need one example, look no further than Game 4 of the Eastern Conference final in 2023.
But really, the thing that really ties it all together is his personality: Swagger.
Genuine swagger.
When Tkachuk dropped the gloves on Thursday night, the hockey world could tell that it was not just for those TV eyeballs, nor was it to show off. It was because he lives, breathes and dies hockey and he wanted to do what he had to do to set the tone.
His emotional intelligence in games, his chirps, his happy-go-lucky cadence when placed in front of the camera is relatable to fans, and it gained him a lot of popularity after that game against Canada.
Just like it has in South Florida, where a once-barren Amerant Bank Arena is now flooded with fans wearing No. 19 Tkachuk jerseys.
When the United States takes the ice for the Championship game in the Four Nations Face-Off against Canada, the entire country will be watching. And they will be rooting for Matthew Tkachuk.