When the New Jersey Devils Fanatics Instagram page graced my feed last night, crying out to the world that there was only one more week left until hockey returns to Newark’s Prudential Center, I knew I had to write about the NHL, and about one player in particular. This player — a clear locker room presence, cheapshotting players left and right, blowing up group chats by angering opposing fans and, yes, a back-to-back Stanley Cup Champion — has certainly been a complete thrill to watch as a neutral fan.
Matthew Tkachuk, aka “Chucker” or “TKACHUKy Cheese,” was drafted in 2016, and to say his career has been filled with controversy would be a brash understatement. In a matchup with the Los Angeles Kings in his rookie season, he elbowed Drew Doughty to the ground. The NHL served Tkachuk a two-game suspension, which set him back $10,277.78. In a matchup in 2019, the two of them nearly dropped the gloves in the final frame after “Chucker” cross-checked Doughty.
The former Calgary Flames forward remained relatively quiet for a few years until 2022, when Tkachuk relocated down to South Florida after Calgary made the decision to trade him for Jonathan Huberdeau. Since his move, he has risen again to prominence as a playoff regular, distracting teams along the way. He has feuded with stars of many teams, a recent example being an incident with Toronto Maple Leafs’ star Mitch Marner’s knee. Tkachuk seems to enjoy sparring with the Boston Bruins most of all, cross-checking Garnet Hathaway in their tournament upset against the Bruins in 2023. He also dropped the gloves against David Pasternak in the 2024 playoffs, and then goaded Trent Frederic in the 2024–25 season opener, an act Frederic called “disrespectful to the game” in an interview after the match.
Even a matchup with his brother’s team, the Ottawa Senators, caused controversy across the league. In November 2023, instead of jersey swaps and photo ops, a game between the teams ended in 13 ejections across both benches in the final period alone.
‘Hate Index’ Ranking:
In order to see what fan sentiment regarding the controversial player in the sport of hockey, I used Natural Language Processing libraries on subreddits to analyze how infuriated fans are about the South Florida forward. After analyzing 1,000 posts spanning five years, Matthew Tkachuk earns a Hate Index Ranking of 33.1 (scored on a scale from 0 to 100), demonstrating that over an astounding one-third of all posts on the player were negative. Not surprisingly, a good chunk of posts originated from Leafs, Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning fans — frequent playoff matchups of the Florida Panthers in the past four seasons.
While Matthew Tkachuk might not be the primary goal scorer on the Panthers, he has been a steady second line player, but his incredible locker presence earns him the ‘A’ badge on the back-to-back championship team that is the Panthers. He is needed to throw off the opposing team, and while the enforcer duties on the team are generally given to Sam Bennett, he is there to step in and drop the gloves as needed. Ever since 2022, it’s been ‘Tkachuk Tkaching’ in Sunrise, with Amerant Bank Arena erupting to life whenever he finds the net.
