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“I don’t know all the details, but I just know it’s going to be late,” Matthew Tkachuk said Thursday at Lifeguard Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, Nevada. “… The fact that we have a bunch of us together in Vegas, it’s going to be a blast tonight, I’m sure.”
Thus, Tkachuks’ off-ice relationship was unchanged by the July 22 trade that sent Matthew and a conditional fourth-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft from the Calgary Flames to the Panthers for the forward. Jonathan Huberdeaudefender MacKenzie Weegarforward view Cole Swallows and a conditional first-round pick in the 2025 draft. The bond between them as each other’s biggest fan remains strong.
But the brothers quickly realized after the trade that the dynamic on the ice will be different between them as Matthew joins Brady in the Atlantic Division.
“The excitement reaches [the trade] happened, it was pure luck,” Brady Tkachuk said. “But then all of a sudden we started thinking, ‘Well, OK, this isn’t fun and games anymore.’ It’s going to be some big games going forward.”
The Tkachuks have gone from being on teams in different conferences, which meant two family-friendly regular season games between them each season, to three intense regular season matchups this season, the first on Oct. 29 at Florida. These games will affect the Stanley Cup Playoff race in the Atlantic Division and Eastern Conference with the potential for the Tkachuks to go head-to-head in playoff series for many seasons to come.
Matthew signed an eight-year deal with Florida after his trade, and Brady is signed for six more seasons with Ottawa.
“These games are four-point games. They mean a ton,” said Matthew Tkachuk, a 24-year-old forward who set NHL career highs with 42 goals, 62 assists and 104 points in 82 games last season with Calgary. “I’m sure our team is going to have playoff games. They’re just very important games for a lot of years.”
Video: Top 5 Matthew Tkachuk plays from the 2021-22 season
The Panthers (58-18-6) won the Presidents’ Trophy by leading the NHL with 122 points last season and are expected to be strong contenders for the Stanley Cup again after the addition of Matthew Tkachuk. Although the Senators (33-42-7) finished seventh in the Atlantic Division last season, they are optimistic about their chances to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2017 after adding to their talented young core by signing Claude Giroux to a three-year contract as an unrestricted free agent acquiring forward Alex DeBrincat in a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks and added goaltending Cam Talbot in a trade with the Minnesota Wild.
Brady Tkachuk set NHL career highs with 30 goals, 37 assists and 67 points in 79 games last season
“Eventually we’ll play in the big playoff games and playoff series and one of us will go home,” he said. “So, it’s definitely changing from a more fun aspect to an adaptation to more of a business and must-win game. … I feel bad for my mom. She’s going to be the most stressed out of anybody in the world that sees it. “
The fights between Brady and Matthew always seemed to be more difficult for Chantal Tkachuk than for their father, former NHL forward Keith Tkachuk. Chantal made them promise not to fight until their first NHL game against each other in 2019.
That promise remains intact despite the expected increased intensity in their game now that they are division rivals.
“It doesn’t change,” Brady Tkachuk said. “It changes how hard we’re going to play each other, but we’re never going to cross that line.”
And if the Senators don’t qualify, don’t expect to see Brady in the stands rooting for Matthew in the playoffs, as he did when he traveled to Calgary to watch the Flames face the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference second round last season. Or the other way around.
“It’s over,” Brady Tkachuk said. “It was a one-time thing.”
But Matthew and Brady plan to continue having dinner together the night before games between them, schedule permitting, and making sure the other does well when they’re not facing each other — at a distance.
“I’m still his biggest supporter, he’s still mine,” Matthew Tkachuk said. “We want each other to do very well personally, but at the end of the day I want to beat his team so badly and he wants to beat mine. So the games mean a lot more now.”
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