They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but in the case of the Tkachuk family, I think it’d be better to say that the shit doesn’t flow far from sewer. Keith Tkachuk was often a shithead and an occasional committer of the dirty hit/play. He averaged 1.85 PIM/game in his career, so damn near a minor penalty per game, which is honestly almost impressive. The only redeeming quality of Keith was that he was a good hockey player, with 1065 points in 1201 career games, or a .88 PPG.
His son Matthew is none of those things. No, Matthew is always a shithead, and a frequent committer of the dirty play, as you can see here. Seriously, what kind of special asshole do you need to be to have enough evidence of you being an asshole that a twelve minute video can be made to document you showing your ass just one year into your career?? He doesn’t commit penalties at quite the same rate as his dad, but with 143 PIM in 112 games so far in his career, he’s at 1.28 PIM/game already with potential to climb. He doesn’t even score at a similar rate to his father, with 70 points in his career thus far, or a .625 PPG. That basically makes him Milan Lucic (coincidence? I think not).
The problem with young Tkachuk tho is that he sometimes manages to be fun to watch. He managed to do this just a few weeks ago, which was pretty cool. And he sometimes has good taste in targets for his bullshit. But being fun to watch isn’t a redeeming quality of an asshole. If anything, it makes it more frustrating, because there is no need to engage in that useless bullshit when you can do cool hockey things instead.
But being a hockey fan might be less fun if we didn’t have villains to hate, and while there were no shortage of those before Tkachuk hit the league, it’s nice of him to be such a willing participant in ensuring there won’t be a shortage in the future either.
Game #38 Preview
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