Pest or Stanley Cup champion: Florida Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk can't be both

Matthew Tkachuk of the Florida Panthers is escorted off the ice by linesman Kiel Murchison.

So much for the heated debate over whether Matthew Tkachuk or Sergei Bobrovsky should win the Conn Smythe trophy.

It was a fun discussion for about a week, right up until the Stanley Cup final started and the Florida Panthers began digging themselves right out of the series.

What had the makings of a fierce and competitive final deteriorated into a clown show through the first two games, with the frustrated Panthers outscored 12-4 and their best player spending more time trying to be a pest than a champion.

Tkachuk was having a great playoffs worthy of MVP consideration (21 points in the first 16 games and some clutch goals along the way), but now that he’s on hockey’s biggest stage, it seems like he’s trying too hard to live up to his image and it’s backfiring.

In Game 1, he goes pointless and, with 4:24 left in a two-goal game, he ruins any chance Florida had at a comeback by taking a pair of stupid roughing minors and a 10-minute misconduct.

In Game 2, he takes his second 10-minute misconduct just four minutes after the first one expired, leaving his teammates to shoulder the last 20 minutes of a blowout loss while he watched from a distance.

You can argue that the misconduct calls have been iffy, but Tkachuk spent years earning this kind of treatment. Constantly starting scrums with no intention of ever backing it up, punching somebody in the face while he’s being held from behind, endless nonsense after the whistle — officials are tired of it.

He’s a brilliant player and, if he sticks to playing hard between the whistles instead of trying to be a trouble-maker, the Panthers might still have a shot. It’s his only play because the Golden Knights aren’t biting on Florida’s current strategy and it’s blowing up in their faces.

LIV AND LET LIVE

Out of the blue, without the players’ knowledge and spearheaded by a commissioner who recruited families of 9/11 victims to help shame anyone who accepted Saudi blood money, the unholy golf alliance between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf financiers is so bad on so many levels that it’s difficult to even believe it’s happening.

Even if we come to find out the PGA was bleeding out and wouldn’t survive without the money, even if golf tournaments will be deeper and better now, even if their prize money doubles or triples and even if the returning LIV players are sanctioned, there is no way commissioner Jay Monahan can, or should, survive this.

The sports world has a very short memory when money and success are involved, but trumpeting his morals from the highest mountain, using earth movers to draw his line in the sand and one year later hopping into bed with the very people he just said golfers should apologize for being associated with is as bad a look as you’re ever going to see.

CASH AND RELEASE

And how about Rory McIlroy?

He turns down a reported $175-million Saudi offer on principle, with the understanding that anyone who joined LIV could never return to the PGA Tour (aside from major championship exemptions). And a year later the defectors are on their way back, McIlroy is out the $175 million and he’s working for the Saudis anyway.

Ouch.

MORAL DEFEAT?

People finding solace in Edmonton likely being eliminated in back-to-back years by the eventual Stanley Cup champions should consider that they get swept by Colorado and outscored 18-9 at five-on-five against Vegas.

And, in the end, four of 16 playoff teams lose to the eventual champion and three more lose to the other finalist. It’s not an exclusive club.

PASS ON THE ELKS

What’s with the 5 p.m. start time on a Sunday for the Elks home opener? An early afternoon game would have been perfect, giving fans plenty of time to enjoy a game in the summer sun while still having the rest of the evening to eat dinner, relax, prepare for work and get the kids ready for school on Monday.

Instead, it’s an evening start that will have them wrestling post-game traffic at 8 p.m. on a Sunday night. Seems like they dropped the ball on a pretty easy play.

Also, why does the team’s website list its games in Pacific Time when Edmonton is in Mountain Time?

THIS AND THAT

Should the Oilers be worrying that, in freeing up $5 million in cap space Monday, the Los Angeles Kings have $13 million to play with heading into the off-season? … One area where Oilers need to improve next season: Even-strength goal-differential from their superstars. Connor McDavid ranked 44th in the NHL last year at +23 and Leon Draisaitl was a distant 113th at plus-12. … Not that he cares about money anymore, but Lionel Messi turning down a two-year, $1.2-billion offer to play in Saudi Arabia is pretty gangster. Also, Messi going to MLS is kind of like McDavid going to the ECHL.

[email protected]