Is he his brother’s keeper? Matthew Tkachuk looks over at his younger brother, Brady, one NHL All-Star to another, and says, “I was always able to overpower him. I mean, look at him.”
“Hey,’’ Brady says.
“A rail of a human.”
They chuckle Thursday afternoon, Fort Lauderdale Beach at their back, two brothers basking in their shared station in life.
“I’m bullying him now,’’ says Matthew, 25, the Florida Panthers star.
“He dominated me growing up,’’ says Brady, 23, the Ottawa Senators star.
Two brothers. One game. That’s how it’s always been, but on Saturday the Tkachuks play on the same team for the first team, of sorts, as All-Stars for the Eastern Conference. It’s an oddity that strikes them. All the years they’ve played. All the teams they’ve been on.
“This is a first,’’ Matthew says.
They’ll be linemates, even, each saying they feel for the poor soul stuck as the third linemate.
“I’m sure we’ll both be chirping if we don’t get the puck,’’ Brady said. “That’s kind of how we are.”
Two brothers. One rink. They even see the similarity to the games that you don’t need to grasp hockey to see. Matthew leads the Panthers in points, shots, power-play goals … and penalty minutes. Brady leads Ottawa points, shots … and penalty minutes.
Even in pee-wee hockey, even at age 7, Matthew was, “was, ‘kind of like you see now,’’ Brady says. “He dominated and he also had that little aggression, too, that everyone likes.”
They’re hockey brothers from a hockey family. Each was born in Arizona, where their father, Keith, spent part of his 19 NHL seasons and led the league with 52 goals in 1996-97. That was just part of the game the brothers inherited.
The other part was equally as admired inside hockey: Dad was physical enough to have more than 100 minutes of penalties in 10 of his seasons. He was the rare scorer who played physical, his game a collision of bodies like the family name is of consonants.
Matthew had such aggression in their regular basketball, soccer or invented games on the trampoline that, “just to survive in our matchups, to give myself a chance, I needed to get dirty at times,’’ Brady says.
“He usually just beat me in everything growing up until we got to that certain age where I grew up and I had a fighting chance. That’s how we both got competitive. No matter what we were doing, we were trying to win it.”
Did Brady beat older brother at anything?
“X-Box,’’ he said.
For Matthew, the shadow of his father was there. For Brady, every shot, every goal growing up was compared to the brother who had already starred. But Brady wasn’t just fighting his older brother’s shadow. He was following it, even chasing it as well.
“I always looked up to him,’’ he said.
Matthew was drafted with the sixth pick by Calgary in 2016. Brady was drafted fourth by Ottawa in 2018. So they started in the same country but opposite conferences. They stayed in touch with regular texts or phone calls through the season.
“Now I ask him what he’s doing and he says he’s out on the jet ski,’’ Brady says. “I was shoveling snow this week and he’s down here in Florida by the pool.”
One side benefit of playing at home is Matthew got an arena suite to the All-Star Game for family and friends. The crowd at Matthew’s home is such that Brady opted for a hotel and called a Wednesday get-together as “chaos.’’
On Thursday, the brothers sat against the backdrop of Fort Lauderdale beach with other All-Stars and talked of their journey here to their first game on the same team. Someday, maybe, the brothers hope to play together with real stakes on the ice.
“That’s something we’ve talked about,’’ Brady said. “Maybe it’s with [Team USA]. It’d be special to be on the same team together. I know it’s something the family would like rather than watching us go at each other.”
His brother’s keeper? “Growing up, we literally did everything together,’’ Matthew said. “It’s special for us to be here together.”
But special only goes so far.
“He’ll chirp at me if he doesn’t get the puck,’’ Brady says.
