A couple of years back, when the NHL announced that its players would return to Olympic competition for the first time in over a decade and participate in the 2026 and 2030 Games, the Tkachuk family group chat lit up. Matthew Tkachuk, now 28, was in his second year as a forward for the Florida Panthers: his team has since won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships. Younger brother Brady, 26, is a four-time NHL All-Star now in his eighth season with the Ottawa Senators. Their father, Keith Tkachuk, played 18 seasons in the NHL and represented the United States at four Olympics.
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The Tkachuks are a confident crew, and both Matthew and Brady knew they were solid bets to make their Olympic debuts in Milan. “We were so jacked,” Matthew tells TIME during a joint video interview with his brother. “All right, it’s on. No offense, I don’t really remember much of anything about the last two Olympics without NHLers. I don’t mean that to be a diss on anybody. But this is the right thing to do.”
NHL players did not participate in the 2018 Olympics in South Korea (owners were growing tired of the disruption to the league’s regular season) or the 2022 Games in China (the COVID pandemic was already wreaking havoc on the NHL schedule); their return to the Olympic rekindles the kind of best-on-best global competition sports fans are accustomed to seeing in sports like basketball at the Summer Games or soccer at the World Cup. What’s more, these Games arrive at an ideal moment for hockey, especially for supporters of the United States and Canada. The inaugural 4 Nations Face-Offtournament, which the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association debuted in February 2025 as a temporary replacement for its annual All-Star Game, was a smashing success, in large part thanks to heated rivalry games between the two North American neighbors at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump was saber-rattling Canada, referring to the country as a potential 51st state and threatening a trade war. The U.S. beat Canada in an preliminary-round fight fest in Montreal, while the Canadians exacted retribution in a thrilling final in Boston, which drew ESPN’s largest hockey audience of all time.
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These thrills should carry over into February, when the U.S. gets another crack at its first men’s hockey gold medal since the 1980 “Miracle on Ice.” Canada has won the last two Olympic golds in tournaments featuring NHL players—on home ice in Vancouver in 2010, and in Sochi in 2014—while Finland and Sweden, who also participated in the 4 Nations Face Off, count as threats too. (Finland won Olympic gold in 2022, and the Olympic Athletes from Russia, or OAR, won in 2018; Russia is banned from this year’s Olympics due to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.) “NHL players from the United States are so prideful of their country, more than any other nation,” says Matthew. “The honor to represent millions at home that are going to be watching, that are either hockey fans or not, that’s what is driving the bus for me. It just doesn’t get bigger than this.”
No two players have done more to create buzz for the U.S. team than the Tkachuks. Before the U.S.-Canada 4 Nations Face-Off game in Montreal, Canadian fans booed during the U.S. national anthem, just as they had two nights earlier before the U.S. beat Finland, 6-1. Tensions between the two nations were high. Trump had enacted an additional 25% tariff on Canadian imports, ostensibly as punishment for fentanyl flowing into the United States from the north.
Given the charged atmosphere, Matthew believed there was a way to further fire up his team and its supporters: inviting Canada’s Brandon Hagel, who plays for the Tampa Bay Lighting, to throw down seconds after the opening face-off. “It was just a lot of built-up stuff,” says Matthew. “Canada’s had our number for the last number of decades. They’ve earned it. We just wanted to go in a hostile environment and try to flip the script a second in. And we felt that was the way to do it. It didn’t matter who was lined up next to me. They would have been asked to fight.”
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The kerfuffle delighted the crowd: fans roared as Tkachuk and Hagel shed their sticks and gloves, traded blows, and wrestled each other onto the ice.
Sam Bennett, a Canadian center with a tough-guy reputation, took the next face-off, against Brady. It didn’t matter that Bennett and Matthew are teammates in Florida, and also played four-plus seasons together in Calgary earlier in their careers. He and Brady went right at it. “I know Matthew and him are really tight,” Brady says. “So it was kind of weird in that aspect.”
“[Bennett] is the only guy that’s tough enough to even attempt to fight Brady,” Matthew chimes in. Brady took Bennett down and slapped his brother five as he joined him in the penalty box.
Then J.T. Miller of the U.S. and Canada’s Colton Parayko tussled to a standstill near Canada’s net. Three fights, in nine seconds.
Eventually, a hockey game broke out. The United States prevailed, 3-1. Both teams made the championship game, played less than a week later. The morning of the final, President Trump called the U.S. team to wish them luck. “I realized this is one of the most significant moments of my life,” says Brady. But Canadian superstar Connor McDavid, a three-time NHL MVP, broke America’s hearts in overtime, scoring a championship-clinching goal. Afterward, then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on X: “You can’t take our country—and you can’t take our game.”
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The Tkachuks grew up fighting—with each other. “Every day, there’s a square up at some point, but that didn’t stop us,” says Brady. “It was a quick, probably five-minute TV timeout. Then we’re back playing again.” Their father memorably traded puncheswith Canadian Claude Lemieux at the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, which the U.S. won. “We watched that video hundreds of times growing up,” says Brady. But they’re more than mere enforcers who can take a hit as well as they deliver it (in December, Brady became the first player in NHL history to be high-sticked in five straight games). The brothers produce plenty of points. “Competitive players with skills is the best way to put it,” says Matthew. “We can play any game, any style out there.”
In the Olympics, fighting is prohibited. The penalties are severe and can result in ejection and suspension. Still, in June, the brothers were two of the first six players named to the Team USA roster. And it won’t be their first trip to an Olympics in Italy. Twenty years ago, as kids, they tagged along with Keith to the Torino Games and even took pictures with Russian stars Alexander Ovechkin, the NHL’s all-time leading goal-scorer, and longtime Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin. Brady went on his honeymoon to Rome, Capri, and the Amalfi Coast a few years back; Matthew hasn’t returned to Italy since those 2006 Games.
“Hopefully we can have some Italian red wine after we win it all,” says Matthew. The 4 Nations final loss is fresh enough in their minds to serve as motivation. Meanwhile, the tension between the leaders of the U.S. and Canada has only escalated. “You have to have that extra hunger, and we have that,” says Matthew. “We want to be the greatest hockey nation in the world, plain and simple. We have a chance to do something so special. All you can ask for is a chance. We’re back in it.”
The post They Grew Up Fighting Each Other. Now These Brothers Are Bringing That Energy to the Olympics appeared first on TIME.
