Tkachuk chooses to avoid fight
Flames’ renowned agitator wasn’t about to take the bait from Oilers’ tough guy
Once upon a time, the Battle of Alberta was all about dropping gloves, throwing punches, jarring, sparring, taking the bait and seeing who would come out on top at the end.
But today’s NHL is different. And Matthew Tkachuk’s influence in Saturday’s 4-2 Calgary Flames win over the rival Edmonton Oilers had the entire province arguing about what exactly should have taken place at the end of the first period.
With less than 20 seconds before the break, Zack Kassian — the owner of 32 NHL fights and 656 penalty minutes with 42 of them in 16 games this season to sit second in the league going into Sunday’s game against Vegas — challenged Tkachuk off the faceoff. Kassian ripped off Tkachuk’s helmet, followed him into the Flames’ zone, tore off his own gloves and started throwing left hooks. All of this without Tkachuk agreeing to the bout.
The 20-year-old you-knowwhat-disturber chose not to engage and took cover while Kassian wailed away. As he headed to the bench, Kassian motioned to his lower lip, mimicking a pouting motion at Tkachuk.
Some called Tkachuk’s actions “turtling ” and his refusal to fight cowardly, reflecting divergent views of how the game has changed.
Some called it smart as Kassian was slapped with a triple-minor plus a 10-minute misconduct, while Tkachuk’s teammate Sam Bennett also decided to get involved and was slapped with a roughing minor against Kassian.
“What good does that do?” said Flames head coach Bill Peters when asked about Tkachuk’s decision not to drop the gloves. “What did we get out of that? Did we get a power play? We didn’t take advantage of it, though, but we set the table. Now we have to clean it up. We were on a fourminute power play and negated it by taking our own penalty, but we set ourselves up to be on the power play.”
Peters was right. The Flames did not score on that particular man advantage in the second period. And, as it turned out, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl ended up working their own power-play magic to give the Oilers a 2-0 cushion. But the Flames bounced back in the end.
The idea of “turtling ” was posed to Tkachuk, who wasn’t made available after Saturday’s game.
“Yeah,” he said. “Wasn’t going to fight that guy. Probably wouldn’t have been the smart thing at the time.”
Earlier in the first period, he’d been sidelined for approximately 10 minutes after absorbing what looked like a slew-foot from Draisaitl and didn’t want to sit out any longer.
He explained further. “There were a couple opportunities that presented themselves that probably wasn’t smart of me to take part in,” Tkachuk said. “One instance in particular (when Kassian approached). I wasn’t necessarily happy with the first play that got me out for the first 10 minutes of the period. As much as I wanted something to come from that, nothing really happened.
“Then they tried to bait me into some things and you have to be smart with that stuff. We’ll take the power plays, we’ll go out there, we’ll try and score. Winning made the game a lot better.”
With nine goals and 12 assists in 20 games to sit in a three-way tie for the team lead in scoring, Tkachuk decided that it was better being on the ice than off it.
“Sometimes you wanna go for it,” he said. “Sometimes you want to allow it to come to you. But I also like scoring on the power play, too, and when we get power-play goals as well. I don’t know. The trade-off, I thought it wouldn’t have been the best thing to do at that point of the game. It wouldn’t have been smart to sit out for another five minutes.”
Not only has he made significant contributions offensively in his third NHL season, but Tkachuk has perfected the art of getting under an opponent’s skin and has drawn his share of penalties.
Peters has taken notice. “There are guys around the league like that. They stir the pot,” he said. “There’s (Brad) Marchand. There’s (Antoine) Roussel. There’s Chucky. There’s a handful of them, but not a bunch of them. They’re good because they bring a little spice to the game, right? They drag everyone in the battle and it makes for a better battle.”
Tkachuk said Saturday’s first period was physical, intense and emotional.
“It was definitely an old-school kind of game, I guess,” he said. “It’s fun. The crowd was into it. We don’t see too many of those it seems like. But it’s definitely fun when Edmonton is in town and you’re playing those rivalry games.
“It started in the first shift kind of thing and escalated throughout that first period.”