[FanIn80]

Tkachuk looking like 'a force' again for Panthers in Stanley Cup Final

EDMONTON – The play of Matthew Tkachuk’s that Paul Maurice has watched over and over isn’t the one you’d think. It isn’t the diving, sliding, reaching save that Tkachuk made with 21 seconds remaining in the Florida Panthers’ Game 5 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, the one where his stick reached out and swiped the puck away from the goal line at the very last second.

No, it’s his sublime backcheck of Connor McDavid from Game 2. With six minutes remaining in a game the Panthers led by two goals, Tkachuk caught up to McDavid on a breakaway chance, getting his stick in, disrupting McDavid just enough that he couldn’t get a clean shot in on Sergei Bobrovsky.

He didn’t score.

“He was outstanding [in Game 5], but the clip that I still don’t understand why I haven’t seen more than once is the backcheck on McDavid when he reaches between his legs and uses his stick and knocks it off on that rush,” the Panthers coach said. “I think the only time I saw that was on the video.

“How would you not show that 5,000 times? I did. That’s training camp video. I told him when we’re doing our laps next year and we’re bagging him at the end of practice and he’s at the end, we’ve seen him catch that guy. We know how fast he is now.”

“I just want to elevate because I want to help my team. I want to help this team win,” Tkachuk said. “That’s what everybody thinks right now. It’s go out there, do whatever you can, just win that one game. We have that mindset. Edmonton has that mindset.

“I think that’s why both teams are in the position they’re in right now is because we both have that. You don’t really think about the series. You don’t try to get ahead of yourself. You don’t reflect on mistakes made in previous games. You just attack each day and each game like it’s a completely new one.

“It doesn’t matter what I did or what we did last game. It’s a fresh day tomorrow, it’s a fresh game day. We’re very excited. … Stanley Cup Finals, it doesn’t get better than this.”

https://www.nhl.com/news/matthew-tka...nley-cup-final