SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Matthew Tkachuk is ready to go back to work. That doesn’t mean he’s ready to stop celebrating Olympic gold.<\/p>\n
Tkachuk \u2014 part of the U.S. men’s hockey team that won gold at the Milan Cortina Games \u2014 is in the Florida Panthers’ lineup for their first post-Olympic game Thursday night against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Panthers are throwing a gold medal celebration and U.S. captain Auston Matthews, who also captains the Maple Leafs, is set to be part of it as well.<\/p>\n
“I really think our team really showed what it\u2019s like to be true Americans and the pride we played with and how we would do every single thing for our country,” Tkachuk said, gold medal dangling from his neck. \u201cSo, the support we\u2019ve gotten is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has been a whirlwind since Sunday for Tkachuk: an all-night party in Italy before a charter flight back to the U.S., more parties with the team in Miami on Monday, then a trip to the White House for the State of the Union with most of his Olympic teammates.<\/p>\n
And life has been one big celebration for Tkachuk in recent years anyway, with a Stanley Cup win in 2024, another in 2025, a wedding in there as well \u2014 and now, gold.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest thing to do in sports is winning the Stanley Cup,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cYou go through an 82-game grind and then your four playoff series, some Game 7s probably, and just the physicality and the travel and everything, it\u2019s crazy. Whereas you could almost argue it over there at the Olympics, it\u2019s so hard because it\u2019s just one-game elimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tkachuk is one of seven Panthers players who won Olympic hockey medals: Brad Marchand, Sam Reinhart and Sam Bennett won silver medals for Canada, while Anton Lundell, Niko Mikkola and Eetu Luostarinen won bronze medals with Finland. Panthers general manager and hockey operations president Bill Zito was part of the braintrust for the U.S. team in Milan, and equipment manager Teddy Richards had the same role for the Americans at the Olympics.<\/p>\n
They’ll all be part of Thursday’s ceremonies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a weird dynamic,\u201d Marchand acknowledged. \u201cObviously we\u2019re disappointed and you want a different outcome, but at the same time, trying to remember to be grateful for the incredible part of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NHL: https:\/\/www.apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/p>\n
Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUNRISE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Matthew Tkachuk is ready to go back to work. That doesn’t mean he’s ready…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[62,57,5141,5,1372,4,63,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-473715","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-panthers","10":"tag-floridapanthers","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-international","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-panthers","15":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116138993853854400","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}