This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Matthew Tkachuk
Florida Panthers Left Wing
57 points in 52 games and a 56.7 per cent chance share, and a body that has now been broken twice in eighteen months.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-17 | CGY | 76 | 13 | 35 | 48 | +14 | 105 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 142 | 9.2 | 14:40 |
| 2017-18 | CGY | 68 | 24 | 25 | 49 | -1 | 61 | 10 | 0 | 2 | 188 | 12.8 | 17:15 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 80 | 34 | 43 | 77 | +14 | 62 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 207 | 16.4 | 17:36 |
| 2019-20 | CGY | 69 | 23 | 38 | 61 | -5 | 74 | 5 | 0 | 4 | 188 | 12.2 | 18:18 |
| 2020-21 | CGY | 56 | 16 | 27 | 43 | +6 | 55 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 151 | 10.6 | 18:09 |
| 2021-22 | CGY | 82 | 42 | 62 | 104 | +57 | 68 | 12 | 0 | 6 | 253 | 16.6 | 17:54 |
| 2022-23 | FLA | 79 | 40 | 69 | 109 | +29 | 123 | 14 | 0 | 6 | 322 | 12.4 | 20:26 |
| 2023-24 | FLA | 80 | 26 | 62 | 88 | +19 | 88 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 280 | 9.3 | 18:38 |
| 2024-25 | FLA | 52 | 22 | 35 | 57 | -3 | 54 | 11 | 0 | 2 | 156 | 14.1 | 18:14 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 642 | 240 | 396 | 636 | +130 | 690 | 76 | 1 | 26 | 1887 | 12.7 | 17:54 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
22 goals and 35 assists in 52 games for 57 points, minus-3, on 18:14 a night with 11 on the power play.
56.7 per cent at five-on-five, the 96th percentile, with on-ice goals of 37-26 against an expected 36-27. 52 games is the number: he was hurt at the Four Nations tournament in February, returned for the playoffs, and played through a torn adductor and a broken sternum.
The Finesse Game
The hands and the vision are elite and the delivery is unusual — he makes plays from below the goal line and from the wall with defenders on him, in traffic he creates himself. 35 assists in 52 games is a genuine first-line rate.
14.1 per cent shooting on 156 attempts, with 41 per cent from inside 20 feet. He is a scorer who arrives at the net through people rather than around them, and there is no version of his offence that does not involve contact.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 202, and among the most physically difficult players in the league to play against. He cross-checks, he agitates, he stands where he is not wanted and does not leave, and he is genuinely strong on pucks.
54 penalty minutes in 52 games. The concern now is accumulated damage: a torn adductor, a broken sternum, surgery in the summer, and two consecutive postseasons played through injuries that would have ended most players’ years.
The Intangibles
The player who changed this franchise, two Cups, and a reputation as the man opponents would least like to play a seven-game series against.
At 27 the hockey is not the question. The question is how many more Aprils a body that plays this way has in it, and the answer is now visibly fewer than it was two years ago.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 722 minutes
- Expected goals
- 56.7%
- 96th pct
- Shot attempts
- 58.5%
- 97th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 37 for, 26 against. Expected: 35.9 and 27.4.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 3 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 88 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 722 minutes at five-on-five
- Sam Bennett68%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2024-25
- The club
- FLA took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 56.7% — 2.7 above the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 722 minutes at five-on-five — 30th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sam Bennett | 54.7% | 61.8% | 52.2% |
| Carter Verhaeghe | 55.0% | 57.7% | 56.3% |
| Dmitry Kulikov | 51.7% | 60.0% | 51.7% |
54.7% together, 61.8% for him apart and 52.2% for Bennett apart. He was better away from Bennett, who was no worse away from him — the pairing cost him more than it cost Bennett.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
235 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 21 of them goals. His median goal came from 10 feet. 41% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 26% from beyond forty.