SUNRISE, Fla. — Matthew Tkachuk barely shot the puck — actually, basically didn’t shoot it — in warmups Saturday.
That was the first clear indication that while the concussion spotter may have temporarily pulled him from Game 3 after Keegan Kolesar’s mammoth open-ice check, something else significant was going on, perhaps a byproduct of the hit.
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He was nailed on the left shoulder and landed awkwardly on the right shoulder.
When Game 4 started Saturday night, it was clear he was playing through something.
Checked along the boards in the first period, he visibly grimaced. At one point in the second, he tried to pick up his stick on the bench and just dropped it like he had a shoulder or collarbone issue. And after playing just four shifts in the third and sitting for a stretch of 10:41 with the hope of preserving what he had left for his latest late-game heroics, Tkachuk barely moved his upper body when he gingerly walked to his stall and talked to the press after the loss.
He just didn’t look comfortable.
“Obviously you want to be out there playing,” Tkachuk said. “Just was able to go out there at the end and tried to make some magic happen late, but ran out of time.”
Tkachuk and Sam Bennett whacked away at the puck in the final seconds, but Tkachuk’s attempt at his latest clutch goal came just after the buzzer and before all heck broke loose. Tkachuk got into it with Alex Pietrangelo, who he trains with in the summer in St. Louis, using his stick to yank the defenseman’s neck before slashing him multiple times.
Tkachuk picked up 14 minutes of penalties, including his fourth 10-minute misconduct of the series for a total of 50 penalty minutes.
MAJOR FIREWORKS TO END GAME 4 🎆 pic.twitter.com/2wenZQW3mu
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) June 11, 2023
Here’s the concern now for the Panthers, beyond the obvious one that they’d need to win three consecutive games to prevent Vegas from winning the Stanley Cup in Year 6 of the franchise’s existence:
Tkachuk, who would likely try to play through anything, is so banged up, he wasn’t able to immediately commit after Game 4 that he’ll be able to play Tuesday’s Game 5.
“That’s a tough question. I don’t really want to talk about that right now,” Tkachuk said. “I don’t know what is going to come from this.”
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To his credit, Tkachuk talked after the game. He could easily have used “getting treatment” as an excuse to not meet with the media, as many players and teams would.
But Tkachuk was not in a position to say what’s hurt and if it stemmed from the Kolesar hit.
“I don’t even know how to answer that, really,” Tkachuk said when asked if the pain is why he couldn’t play for nearly 11 minutes of the third with the Panthers trailing by one. “Just trying to find a way out there to make it work tonight and came up just probably a second short.”
oof tkachuk was bambi legs pic.twitter.com/IxIFrVOUpd
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) June 9, 2023
Panthers coach Paul Maurice said after the game that with two off days, the team will have time to get Tkachuk rest and reassess his status.
“Matthew’s been a grinder his whole life and he was again tonight,” said Maurice, adding of the decision to sit him for much of the third: “We were just looking and hoping to get into a situation where he could use what he had to give us and hopefully get on the power play a little earlier, I guess, than certainly at the end of the game.”
That last line was a dig at the officials, who didn’t give Florida its first power play until there were 17 seconds left, when they had no choice but to give Pietrangelo an automatic puck-over-the-glass delay-of-game penalty.
If the Panthers have any chance of coming back in this series, they’re going to need Tkachuk in the lineup.
One person who knows that is Devils general manager Tom Fitzgerald, who actually made the Damon Severson trade with Columbus on Monday night while at a Ft. Lauderdale restaurant having dinner with the Tkachuks.
Fitzgerald’s dad, Tom, and Keith Tkachuk’s mom, Gerry, are brother and sister, so Fitzgerald has known his second cousins, Matthew and Brady, since they were infants. In fact, last July, the Tkachuks and Fitzgeralds rented a big house in Maine for a family vacation while the trade between Florida and Calgary was going down.
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Fitzgerald was trying to trade for Matthew, but he had made it known he was interested in only Florida, St. Louis, Colorado, Vegas, Tampa Bay and Carolina. It came down to the Panthers, Hurricanes and Blues.
“He had his eyes set on here, but I didn’t go down without a fight, that’s for sure,” Fitzgerald said. “I said I need you for five minutes, tried to sell him what we’re trying to do: ‘Adding a player like you and what you would do for our organization.’ We tried to convince him on New Jersey. OK, we don’t have no state income tax (like Florida), but we’re going to be good, and adding him to my lineup, oh boy.”
The next day, Calgary dealt Tkachuk to Florida for Jonathan Huberdeau, MacKenzie Weegar, Cole Schwindt, a lottery-protected first-round draft pick in 2025 and a conditional fourth. He then signed for eight years at $9.5 million annually.
What Fitzgerald loves about Tkachuk is “he drags people into the fight. That’s what everybody admires about him. Not only his skill set, his hockey sense is off the charts. He calls his shots, let’s face it. Just look at the Boston series, the Carolina series. Matthew is a finesse power forward. Keith was a power … power forward. Very different players, but very much alike, too.”
The Panthers planned to spend off days Sunday and Monday reenergizing and reminding themselves how they also rallied from a 3-1 deficit to upset the big, bad Bruins in the first round.
“We’ll tell stories over the next two days, for sure — reminders of the energy level we brought into Game 5 in Boston. And we’ll celebrate it,” Maurice said. “We’ll celebrate before the puck drops.
“Because you have that inner faith, and you’ve also invested so very much, there’s a feeling of earned success. You’ve earned the right. So I would say this, I believe fully you’ve earned the right to play our best hockey in a difficult situation. All we want to do is get this thing back here. It’s not the series … just get this thing back home and give our fans another look at us.”
(Top photo of Matthew Tkachuk: Jasen Vinlove / USA Today)
