Midweek Roundup 5.31.23

On Matthew Tkachuk—the greatest Panther of all time, Luke Glendening’s perpetual utility, and Adam Fantilli’s latest triumph

It was not quite 10:45 when Matthew Tkachuk became the greatest Florida Panther of all time—an early night, really, when you consider that it was after 1:00 AM when he won Game 1 in quadruple overtime.  

With thirty seconds left and the score tied in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Final, the Carolina Hurricanes—trailing three games to none in the series and, as if that weren’t enough, short-handed—cleared the puck to the neutral zone.  You could forgive the Carolina penalty killers for believing they’d secured passage to overtime.

Instead, Panther captain Aleksander Barkov regained the zone.  Still, it didn’t appear a scoring chance of any quality was imminent.  Tkachuk took a pass from Barkov at the point to the left of Hurricane goaltender Frederik Andersen, then sent a diagonal pass that bisected the offensive zone and found the tape of Sam Reinhart.  

Though the clock showed just twelve seconds, Reinhart appeared in no hurry.  Tkachuk cut through the slot.  A Reinhart shot deflected high but settled onto Barkov’s blade.  After arcing behind the net, Tkachuk took a pass from Barkov, cut inside and tucked the series-clinching goal—his third game-winner of the series—past Andersen.  

Tkachuk—mouthguard hanging from grinning lips and arms raised in hard-earned triumph—dropped to his knees, the clock showed 4.3 seconds, and the Florida Panthers qualified for their second-ever Stanley Cup Final.

With nearly three full playoff rounds of precedent, you couldn’t in good faith call it surprising to see Tkachuk net the winner, yet there was something almost cartoonish about the tableau—too neat, too storybook for an event as chaotic and cruel in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  This isn’t supposed to be a sport where you expect to give your best player the game’s last shot.  Your best player scores the game winner in three of four games of a conference final sweep, while providing in the game-winning assist in the other, in a sports movie or childhood fantasy not the NHL postseason.

Tkachuk made his way to South Florida last July by virtue of trade that, once again, felt out of line with NHL standards.  This wasn’t a player who can help right now for some picks and prospects, nor was it a salary cap dump; the Panthers brought in Tkachuk and a conditional 2025 fourth rounder, while shipping winger Jonathan Huberdeau, defenseman Mackenzie Weegar, prospect Cole Schwindt, and a lottery-protected ‘25 first off to Calgary.  For both the Flames and Panthers, the trade signaled a future that would reverse field on recent regular season success and postseason failure.

It would strain credulity to suggest anything resembling nobody believed in Matthew Tkachuk.  This was no nobody, nor was it an underdog story.  The twenty-five-year-old, Scottsdale-born winger went sixth to the Flames in the 2016 NHL Draft.  When his run in Calgary came to an end last summer via RFA negotiations, pundits lauded the Panthers’ courage in acquiring a player described as a unicorn for his uniquely diversified tool belt.

Still, I do not recall a single pundit suggesting that Tkachuk’s arrival ushered Florida into serious contention to win the Eastern Conference in 2023.  Instead, the optimistic outlook on the trade from a Panthers perspective suggested that swapping Huberdeau out for Tkachuk would prolong their window of contention.  Tkachuk is four years younger, and, if not quite as productive as Huberdeau, plays a style that could provide an alternative to Florida’s dependence on creating offense off the rush.

And even if the trade that brought in Tkachuk inspired positive feelings about the franchise’s future, there was no such optimism around the hiring of Paul Maurice.  It’s so rare that an NHL coach feels exciting, but Andrew Brunette—the man Maurice replaced—was just that in his short tenure as Florida’s bench boss.  His Panthers won the Presidents’ Trophy in high style—playing dynamic transition-happy hockey and scoring at a record pace.  Maurice was the opposite: a retread, whose teams tended more toward blunt object than scalpel.  I count myself among those who doubted that the coaching change was a step in the right direction.

Before Tkachuk and Maurice’s first season at Fla Live Arena arrives at its conclusion, the Florida Panthers have blown away the expectations of the former’s most bullish supporters and made a mockery of the latter’s skeptics.  Maurice has eased the Panthers’ dependence on the rush for offensive creativity, urging them instead to lean on their forecheck and in-zone offense.

And that brings us to the little matter of the Panther GOAT.  There is no shortage of great NHL players that played in Florida, but great Florida Panthers?  Those are harder to find.  In the former category, you have the likes of Jaromir Jagr, Igor Larionov, and Pavel Bure.  Before this season, the serious contenders for the latter crown were perhaps Scott Mellanby, Roberto Luongo, and Huberdeau.

Huberdeau remains the Panthers all-time leader in games played (671) and assists (415), and he is second all-time in points behind Barkov (613 to 631).  When you look at postseason marks, the numbers are even bleaker.  Before this year, Huberdeau and Barkov were tied for the franchise’s all-time lead in playoff points with twenty-one, a figure Tkachuk has matched through three rounds of postseason play.  They were followed by Ray Shepheard, Dave Lowry, and Stue Barnes at eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen respectively.

So why does it feel reasonable to deem a player who has spent just one season in South Florida?  Because, to be blunt, the Florida Panthers have spent their thirty years of existence doing not much of anything, least of all winning.  Luongo spent eleven seasons in Florida, split between two tenures, and played in just one playoff series (a six game defeat at the hands of the Islanders in 2016).  Even the 1996 Cats–who trapped and obstructed their way to the Final—lost in four straight to the Colorado Avalanche, which is to say the Florida Panthers have never won a game in the Stanley Cup Final and that Matthew Tkachuk has already guided the team as far as it’s ever been before.

If you squint, there are broad similarities between these Cats and those of ‘96 (excellent defensively, backstopped by strong goaltending, knocking out more traditional hockey powers along the way) but the feats of the front man for these Cats compare more closely to Paul Bunyan’s than they do to Mellanby’s.  Any journey through the NHL postseason is arduous, but for Tkachuk, conquering the Eastern Conference has been a parade of feats of strength.

Down 3-1 in a first round series against the Boston Bruins, the same Boston Bruins who accrued more points than any team in the history of the regular season, Tkachuk scored his first overtime winner of the playoffs.  From the visitors’ dressing room, he proclaimed to his teammates “Boys, remember this room; we’ll be back here for seven.”  And they were, and they won.

In the second round against the Maple Leafs, Tkachuk played the Toronto media (which admittedly has never needed much help in frothing itself into a frenzy) with ease.  The coup de grace came after the series when he told TNT’s Darren Pang “We don’t hear many, ‘We want Florida’s’ at this moment right now and God does that feel good”—referring to the chants that broke out in Maple Leafs Square after Toronto clinched its opening series against the Lightning.

Then came the three winners in four games against the Canes, an achievement that left no doubt as to Tkachuk’s status as a folk hero.  After the first, the quadruple OT one, he skated straight for the exit and made his way to the tunnel.  As his teammates exchanged confused words of celebration, Tkachuk found himself in an awkward liminal space—alone, no longer on the ice, but not quite to the celebratory locker room.

Unlike in Game 1, his Florida teammates knew exactly what to do as Tkachuk wasted little time with fanfare and skated straight back to the tunnel after the second.  Asked his message as the group left the ice, Tkachuk told TNT “bus in ten.”  Their work in Raleigh was done, and unlike back in Boston, Tkachuk had no intention of taking his team back.  Where Matthew Tkachuk went, the Panthers would follow.

After the Panthers took care of Carolina in four games (with no need for that return trip to Raleigh), Florida had some downtime before the Final would begin.  Tkachuk took the opportunity to watch South Florida’s other eight-seed in the conference finals, the Miami Heat.  He sat with the NBA on TNT crew for a pregame interview.

With erudition, he explained to Kenny “the Jet” Smith that neither skating, nor shooting is the hardest skill to master in hockey but rather tactical intelligence, saying “Gretzky wasn’t going to where the puck was, he was going to where it was going to be—that’s the biggest skill.”  It was a fitting comment for a player who is elite in all ways but footspeed yet still among the league’s best in an era when the game has never been faster.

Shaquille O’Neal—admitting his general disinterest in hockey from the start—asked whether the Panthers would have home-ice advantage (a phrase he thought he’d invented as a substitute for homefield or home-court advantage). With patience and a wry smile, the 6’2” winger told the 7’1” center “Shaq, we got in by one point, we definitely don’t have home ice advantage.”

We always say the NHL is a copycat league, and if the Panthers finish the job and the Stanley Cup does parade past Sawgrass Mills Mall, every team in the NHL will be desperate for their Tkachuk trade.  The bad news for them is that there is only one Matthew Tkachuk.  Sure, many players might match him at any single skill, but there is no one else who can combine them all.  

Tkachuk is an elite forechecker and playmaker from below the dots.  He finishes around the net with patience and poise.  He can contribute to the Panthers’ transition game with his neutral zone hold up play.  His instincts and effort more than compensate for a lack of footspeed in the defensive end.  He somehow manages a persona that is at once schoolyard bully and charismatic protagonist.

So yes, the Panthers have had great players before, but they’ve never had this.  They’ve never had a player who was either the envy of the league or who was a lethal postseason performer; Matthew Tkachuk is both.  If I were the Vegas Golden Knights, I’d expect fitful nights of sleep between the present and Saturday’s Game 1—filled by the inescapable reality that I was the last world left for Tkachuk to conquer.

The Last Wolverine Standing

The last Michigan Wolverine playing in the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs was Luke Glendening, the thirty-four-year-old Dallas Stars fourth line winger.

Despite making their second conference finals appearance in four seasons, Glendening’s Stars are an imperfect outfit.  Their top line of Jason Robertson, Joe Pavelski, and Roope Hintz is as dynamic as any in the NHL.  Twenty-three-year-old Miro Heiskanen is among the best and most exciting defenseman in the league.  Goaltender Jake Oettinger looks like a credible contender to become the league’s best goalie in the not too distant future.

However, depth, for Dallas, is a concern.  As a result, their formula for success hinges on something like survival at five-on-five, while excelling on special teams.  Within that context, Glendening has an important role to play.  He thrives defensively, on the forecheck, and on the penalty kill—all essential functions to making things work for Dallas.

After the Stars fell behind 0-2 in the series by dropping Games 1 and 2 in Las Vegas, coach Peter DeBoer elected to make Glendening a scratch in Game 3, hoping to jumpstart his attack.  The Stars conceded an early goal, then captain Jamie Benn took a reckless five-minute major for a cross-check to the head of his counterpart—Knights captain Mark Stone.  Without their best penalty killer in the lineup, Dallas conceded twice more.  The game was 3-0, Vegas, and soon the series was as well.

Glendening returned to the lineup for Game 4 and even scored on a beautiful deflection in Game 5, but in the end, Vegas (a team put together by general manager Kelly McCrimmon, who played for Michigan from 1980-84) proved too much for Dallas.  The Stars were blown out 6-0 in Game 6, and their season ended.

For Glendening, the defeat ushers in an uncertain offseason.  At thirty-four years old, the East Grand Rapids native is out of contract and an unrestricted free agent.  Perhaps he will stay on in Dallas.  Perhaps he will find a new home.  Perhaps this was the end.

Whichever the case, Glendening’s career has never been easy, but as a player, he has always been useful.  Glendening arrived a walk-on in Ann Arbor after a post-graduate year at Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.  After just one year, he earned a letter.  

After four years at Michigan, he signed his first professional contract with his boyhood team.  In 2013, he won the Calder Cup with the Grand Rapids Griffins.  The following season he made his NHL debut.

Glendening belongs to an unfortunate generation of Red Wings—cursed with the burden of trying to carry a franchise’s legacy forward as the likes of Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk, and Henrik Zetterberg aged out of the NHL.  Along with players like Tomas Tatar, Justin Abdelkader, or Danny DeKeyser, Glendening’s only crime was that he could never be one of those Hall of Famers, and who could blame him?

Before his time in Detroit was up, he became the first undrafted player to play in 500 games for the Wings since the NHL adopted its seven-round draft in 2005.  After the ‘20-21 season, he made his way to Dallas.  

Glendening was never a star.  His career high in goals is twelve and in points is twenty-three.  Still, Luke Glendening made a career of being useful to winning games, even as the Red Wing team he played for never seemed to do much of it.

Adam Fantilli’s one-man Triple Gold Club

We close this week with a word of congratulations to Adam Fantilli, who has become the first player ever to win the Hobey Baker, World Juniors, and World Championship in the same season.

At an individual level, Fantilli’s highlight of the tournament came in the semifinal game against Latvia.  With the score tied at two midway through the second, Fantilli made a glorious inside-out move to free himself for a wrist shot, which he buried.  

Beyond the aforementioned accolades, Fantilli’s draft year included a Big Ten championship, Frozen Four berth, and the NCAA lead in goals and points.  It seems no one was ever going to be able to unseat Connor Bedard atop the 2023 NHL Draft, but Fantilli exceeded every expectation and made the most persuasive push imaginable.

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