Barclay Goodrow, right, of the New York Rangers checks Matthew Tkachuk, centre, of the Florida Panthers as he collides with New York goalie Igor Shesterkin during the second period in Game Four of the Eastern Conference Final at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Fla. on May 28.Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
Shortly after everyone decided the New York Rangers were a team of destiny because that would be best for the NHL, the Florida Panthers were at it again.
On Wednesday, they won a game they looked like losing. What should have been a 3-1 lead for the Rangers becomes a 2-2 series. Any close thing favours the Panthers these days.
Florida isn’t the best overall club left in the playoffs – that’s Dallas. They aren’t the most exciting – that’s Edmonton or New York.
But if you had to choose a team to compete gladiator style – 60 minutes to the death – they are the one you’d pick. They have that charisma.
They haven’t had it for long. Three years ago, the Panthers were stuck in the NHL’s murky middle. Not bad enough to tank and not good enough to get anywhere that matters.
Just about everyone who is important to a great 2024 Florida team was also on the extremely mediocre 2022 Florida team.
Sam Reinhart, Aleksander Barkov, Carter Verhaeghe, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad, Sergei Bobrovsky et al. – they were all there.
When you looked up and down that roster, the 2021-22 Panthers were a finished product. It just didn’t add up to much. They could not get past the Tampa Bay Lightning. Even if they did, either the Bruins or the Leafs (so, the Bruins) would still be standing there.
Panthers GM Bill Zito could have picked around the edges. That’s what you do in the NHL when you have two or three all-stars and a lot of guys secured under contract. You do nothing and call it something.
Instead, Zito took one wild swing. He traded Jonathan Huberdeau, a long-time centrepiece who’d just scored 115 regular season points, to Calgary for Matthew Tkachuk.
Tkachuk’s quality was obvious, but he’d become leprous by refusing the NHL’s sign-with-the-one-who-brung-you dance. It didn’t help when he made it clear that half the reason he’d gone to Florida was the weather.
Three guys at a bar could have a long argument about how much one hundred-point guy can really affect a team’s ability versus another hundred-point guy, but you can’t debate results.
Huberdeau’s Panthers won one playoff round in 10 years. Tkachuk’s Panthers have won five in two, and we’re still counting.
Current Leafs GM Brad Treliving was the man who got rooked on the Tkachuk trade. That Tkachuk forced him to do it is no excuse. The GM’s job isn’t explaining to fans that even hockey players can hate winter. It’s winning by whatever means necessary.
Treliving failed to do so. Within a year, he was out of a job. Florida’s success had as much to do with his downfall as Calgary’s failure.
Unlike his father or his brother – both of whom were as good or better than he is strictly in terms of talent – Tkachuk is one of those guys who sheds winning the way the rest of us shed the flu virus.
Players who are decent on their own terms turn into Rocket Richard when they get near him. If Florida wins a Cup in three weeks time, that trade becomes a top-10 all-timer.
No one must feel this more keenly than Treliving. He’s in line to become Calgary’s Harry Frazee (look it up).
You’d like to think that Toronto hired Treliving in part because he’d been on the sharp end of that stick, one they’ll soon have to start tugging over.
Short a howling siren and a spinning red light, it can’t be more obvious to Treliving that he must make a Tkachuk-for-Huberdeau trade this summer. And that this time, he has to win it.
This is where you say something about Mitch Marner or John Tavares. That they’re the guys that need getting rid of.
That is not the lesson of the Tkachuk trade. The lesson there is that if you’re in the market for a brand new patio set, don’t expect to get it for the four mismatched tires that’ve been taking up space in your basement. Nobody wants your garbage.
Huberdeau wasn’t a difference maker, but Florida hadn’t spent most of a decade reminding people of that. He still had some shine on him. Not so, Marner. Whoever takes him will have to rebuild him from the ground up at the same time that they’re paying him US$12-million a year. Sounds enticing.
It’s not like Toronto’s desperation is a secret. Opponents are probably not inclined to help them with that. If anything, there’s no club they’d like to chisel more.
The Leafs’ only advantage is that they still have guys with broad market appeal. Getting true value for Marner is impossible. But what else you got?
If the Leafs expect to make a transformative change this summer, everyone should be on the block. That includes Auston Matthews, and William Nylander, and Auston Matthews plus William Nylander. I don’t know how you do it, or to whom, or for what, but that’s why the people who run the club are paid so much. To win deals that aren’t winnable. To win deals that aren’t even doable.
How many more times does this club have to lose before all the usual rules about the way things are done go out the window? Check the ledger. Toronto’s sitting on human NFTs. All their accrued roster value isn’t worth a nickel in the real world.
What the Leafs need in a trade isn’t the exact same amount of talent back. What they need are winners. Currently, they don’t have any. Just one – and I don’t care what exactly he does, or how much he makes, or how many goals he scores in February – could be the difference.
When you think of it like that, there is no good or bad price. There is just a good or bad result.
If the Leafs fail again, everyone’s getting fired. That’s obvious. But if they are incapable of taking a big swing this summer, with the instructive example so familiar to their current management, why would they deserve a chance to try again elsewhere?