Tkachuk a bright spot in lost season
He’s got makings of future Flames captain with hell-for-leather attitude
When the Calgary Flames cleaned out their locker-stalls and said their farewells last Monday, Matthew Tkachuk was seething.
One week later, he’s probably still steamed.
That’s part of what the Flames love about this cagey kid. As general manager Brad Treliving put it earlier this season: This guy would bite off his left arm if it meant that we could win.
The 20-year-old Tkachuk was a key offensive contributor as a sophomore — tickling twine 24 times and adding 25 assists for 49 points — but he certainly wasn’t going to use that arm to pat himself on the back as the Flames split for an extended vacation.
“I look at it a little differently; whether you had 100 points or 10 points, you didn’t have a great year. I mean, we didn’t do enough to get us into the playoffs,” Tkachuk fumed during his final media availability of the season. “Whether that’s producing, whether that’s doing the little things, whether that’s the way you’re carrying yourself in the room, we just didn’t get that little bit of extra push to get in.
“When people say, ‘You had a better year. Offensively, you produced a little bit more,’ it’s not about that at all. I didn’t do enough to help the team get into the playoffs.”
We hate to crash this peeved-off party with a platter of positivity, but arguably the most encouraging development for the Flames during this lost season was Tkachuk’s continued emergence as a leader.
This kid, at least from this vantage point, sure seems like future captain material.
It’s no accident the sparkplug left-winger was assigned captain Mark Giordano’s next-door neighbour in the home locker-room at the Saddledome.
“You look at a guy like Mark who is the epitome of leadership on our team and probably throughout the NHL, and obviously you want to pick up as much as possible to hopefully be looked at as guys like myself look at him,” Tkachuk said. “For me to be a guy in the future looked upon as the way we look at Mark, that would be cool.” That day is coming.
Soon.
Giordano, 34, remains the heart and soul of the Flames and will have the “C” stitched on his jersey for as long as he’s on the payroll at the Saddledome, but Tkachuk has already earned the respect of his co-workers, despite being the youngest guy on the roster.
Not just because he puts up points. (He finished third on the team’s scoring charts this season, trailing only the dynamite duo of Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan.)
Not just because he seemed to mature after two bone-headed suspensions in a three-week stretch.
“He just wants to win so bad and is such a competitor, and it rubs off on all the other guys, too,” Giordano said. “You know, when things aren’t going well for the team, it frustrates him and he’ll do whatever he can to get us back in games and help us win.
“You look at the way he plays. He doesn’t play for anything personal. He doesn’t play for his stats. He doesn’t play for goals and assists. He plays to win, and stuff like that rubs off on other guys. He’s 20 and he’s a big part of our team already. He’s a big reason why we win games.”
The reason the Flames are watching the opening round of the Stanley Cup playoffs from home is they didn’t win enough of ’em in 2017-18.
With a 37-35-10 record, they ultimately finished 11 points back of the second wild card in the Western Conference, a divide that was stretched by a late-season letdown.
It’s not the lone explanation for their face-plant, but it’s also not a complete coincidence the Flames won just two of their final dozen outings as Tkachuk was sidelined with a concussion.
Treliving has admitted his squad seemed to lack emotional investment in key contests.
The young whippersnapper wearing No. 19 is probably exempt from that criticism.
Nobody has ever questioned his give-a-hoot.
“He’s a productive player, but it’s just his all-in attitude,” Treliving said earlier this season. “In a short amount of time, he’s become a very important player, too, so players gravitate to that. Players recognize the importance that he has to our team.
“But I think players also recognize the way that he plays. I mean, this guy would bite off his left arm if it meant that we could win. Players, young and old, get an appreciation for that. Anytime that you have a teammate who is that competitive, and when winning is so vital to the makeup, I think you get an appreciation for it.”
Mention “Tkachuk” and “leadership” to any of the higher-ups at the Saddledome and they ’re quick to caution that you don’t want to push those responsibilities on a young ’un.
It needs to happen organically. In this case, it is.
“He has good guys to learn from, especially with (Giordano) being here, but he has those qualities and he’s starting to take it more upon himself,” Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan said before Tkachuk’s season-ending injury. “And I like the way he’s doing it, too. It’s more on the ice, in between shifts, trying to say the right things at the right times, do the right things at the right times, making sure guys know what’s going on in the game within the game. It’s not that in the locker-room, ‘Rah-rah’ or ‘Hey, listen to me.’ He’s not doing that. He’s letting his game kind of talk, and I think that’s the first step for him in that leadership department.
“That’s where it starts for young guys, and he’s certainly started that up.”
On garbage-bag day, Flames alternate captain Troy Brouwer revealed that Tkachuk is a bit more outspoken than the bench boss was letting on.
“He’s not a quiet voice in the room, which is amazing in our room,” Brouwer said. “It’s a little bit unheard of to hear a 20-yearold be that vocal and that opinionated. But he reads the game well, he sees the game well, he understands the demeanour and the mentality and he is going to be a great player and a good leader in this league for a long time.
“He can talk, and then he backs it up,” said Brouwer, 32. “This league is changing a lot, especially since when I was in the league early. I don’t think I said anything for the first couple of years, and then you kind of emerge and find what kind of role player you’re going to be, what type of leader you’re going to be. He’s one that is picking it up quick. But also, that’s the way the league is going. With how good these young guys are, you need your young guys to start doing that early on in their careers and be comfortable doing it.”
There are sure to be changes — maybe some biggies — after the Flames underachieved their way to a playoff miss, but as fourth-line centre and veteran voice-of-reason Matt Stajan slipped into Monday ’s goodbye remarks: “It’s not like you can just bring someone in and have them change everything.”
Already here, Tkachuk doesn’t want to simply be a part of the change, he wants to help lead it.
During this dreadful campaign, that’s perhaps the most positive news for the Flames.
“You want to be that differencemaker,” Tkachuk declared. “You want to be taking on more of a role, where you’re producing more and you’re taking charge that way, but you also want to be a guy in the locker-room who people start to look up to.
“The way I play, I want that to kind of be a staple of the way I want our team to play. I think the way we’re going to be successful, the way playoff hockey needs to be played, it’s played hard. I want to try to show that by how I play out there.”