Brady Tkachuk finally settling in with Florida

It looks like Brady Tkachuk has got his swagger back.

The Florida Panthers’ biggest offseason acquisition got off to a slow start, but Tkachuk made history this week, becoming the first NHLer since 1986 to record back-to-back natural hat tricks, accomplishing the feat in their win Tuesday against the Columbus Blue Jackets and Thursday against the Vancouver Canucks.

On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discuss Tkachuk’s second hat trick in as many games and how his role with the team has evolved since being traded to the Sunshine State.

Tyler Yaremchuk: It’s kind of insane to have two hat tricks in one season, never mind two hat tricks back to back, never mind them both be natural hat tricks … then to have the second one be capped off with an overtime-winning goal. It’s been quite the run for the two Tkachuks in Florida.

Carter Hutton: It’s been pretty impressive, so far. We kind of knew it, as well, it was just nice of Matthew to let someone else assist on his brother’s goals.

I think for Brady, this whole breakdown has just been a lot. The trade, the pressure, and we knew he would get to this point, so it’s pretty impressive to do it in this fashion, to have this bit of a lull, to start to grip your stick a little tighter. Scoring goals is an art, right? When it’s happening, it’s easy and free-flowing, you’ll hear goal scorers talk about that all the time.

To answer the bell like this in a game where they were losing 2-0 going into the third period, that’s an important storyline. You’re sitting inside that locker room down 2-0 to the lowly Canucks, and to fight back and be a leader, especially when you have Aleksander Barkov out and Brad Marchand out.

This is a huge game for Brady Tkachuk and the Florida Panthers.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…