Keith Tkachuk was introduced to a Toronto crowd at the Hockey Hall of Fame Game on Sunday night and heard exactly what the city thinks of his family. Twenty-four hours later he walked up to a microphone a few blocks away to be inducted, and dealt with it in one line.
“Wow, this might be the first time a Tkachuk has ever received a warm welcome in Toronto,” Tkachuk said.
He had a second one ready for Larry Pleau, the former St. Louis executive who traded for him, traded him away to Atlanta, then traded for him again.
“He’s probably trying to move me as we speak,” Tkachuk said.
Keith Tkachuk’s NHL career:
| Drafted | Games | Goals | 50-goal seasons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 19th overall, 1990 | 1,201 | 538 | 2 |
Who drafted Keith Tkachuk?
Joe Yannetti spent a good portion of those ten minutes being thanked. He was Winnipeg’s Boston-based scout in 1990, and he kept pushing for a kid who had broken his ankle and missed much of his draft year, until the Jets took him in the first round.
“He found a way for the Jets to draft me in the first round and he changed my life forever,” Tkachuk said.
Winnipeg gave him more than a career. It is where he met his wife Chantel, where Eddie Olczyk gave him the nickname Walt, and where he says he first understood what a privilege playing in the NHL actually was.
The speech turned once he reached his family. Matthew Tkachuk was visibly in tears in the crowd as his father spoke about his children, and Keith had to look away from his own mother.
“I purposely cannot look at my mother. She’s crying right now and she’ll make me cry,” he said.
He described his parents as first-ballot inductees if such a thing existed for parents, and gave Chantel the best line of the night.
“You raised two sons, a daughter and a husband,” he said, calling her the biggest win of his life.
Then he went back to where he started, and turned the joke into something else entirely.
“I began tonight by joking about a Tkachuk finally getting a warm reception in Toronto, but the truth is throughout my life this game has welcomed me at every level,” Tkachuk said. “I accept this honor with gratitude to everyone who has been a part of my journey.”
He went in alongside Patrice Bergeron, Carey Price, Pekka Rinne, Cindy Curley and Brian Burke. The booing on Sunday had rather more to do with his sons than with him.
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