LAS VEGAS — When he was just starting his National Hockey League career in St. Louis, Alex Pietrangelo spent part of a summer house-sitting for one of his original teammates.
Pietrangelo discovered in the basement of the home the little mini-sticks rink that Keith Tkachuk had set up for his boys, Matthew and Brady. There were lots of scuffs on the walls. Apparently, the games were rambunctious.
It turned out, so were the boys.
Now 33, Pietrangelo remembers Tkachuk bringing his sons to the rink in St. Louis, and Matthew and Brady bombing around the Blues’ dressing room. Reflecting on it this week, Pietrangelo smiled, mentioning how his own kids now visit the Vegas Golden Knights dressing room.
“I would have been what, 18, 19 years old, so they were just little guys,” Pietrangelo said Sunday between games in the Stanley Cup Final. “I’m nine years older than Matthew, so he was, what, 10 at the time. It’s just funny how things come back.”
Keith Tkachuk retired after the 2009-10 season, but the family stayed in St. Louis and Matthew and Brady eventually became part of the same training group that Pietrangelo still skates with in the summer — even after he left the Blues in 2020 for a stunning $61.6-million free-agent contract in Las Vegas.
The scuff marks Matthew Tkachuk is making in the Stanley Cup Final are mostly on Pietrangelo, who seems to be the Florida Panthers‘ primary target, especially after whistles. During scrums in Games 1 and 2, which the Golden Knights easily swept to get halfway to their first Stanley Cup, Tkachuk took advantage of the chaos to punch Pietrangelo in the head.
“Yeah, multiple times,” the Knights’ No. 1 defenceman told Sportsnet. “He comes as advertised. That’s OK, I can take it.”
Asked Friday on media day about skating with the Tkachuks in the summer, Pietrangelo said: “I mean, there’s a lot of guys who skate with other guys. (Matthew) is a good player. They both are. They’re both big bodies, big boys. I skate with Brady, too, and I also played with their dad. That sounds a little weird sometimes.
“I stayed at their house one summer. They were out of town, but I stayed at their house with another guy. I still remember they had a little hockey rink in the basement. And here they are. Time flies.”
Like a rabbit punch in a scrum.
The Tkachuk boys have grown into NHL stars themselves and Pietrangelo is finishing his 13th full season in the league — most of them as one of the game’s top-10 blueliners.
The defenceman from King City, Ont., has finished fourth in Norris Trophy balloting a couple of times, including during his final season in St. Louis, which was the year after Pietrangelo helped the Blues cap a storybook run to the Stanley Cup.
“The first time, it’s a big deal obviously,” Pietrangelo said. “You work your whole life to get there, and I think you’re a little more calm the second time around because you know what to expect. You’ve been there. You certainly try to enjoy it a bit more because you never know when it’s going to happen again, right? You think it’s going to happen but it’s harder than you think.”
Before the Knights’ 7-2 blowout win on Monday, he explained: “Relaxed isn’t the right word, but you almost feel a little bit less pressure because you’ve been through it before. I think these whole playoffs in general, going on this run, for me, it’s felt a little bit less tense. I’ve played 115 or 120 playoff games [129 actually], and as you keep going you get that feeling. But I feel like our group, the way we are as a group in the locker room, I think we’re enjoying this process.
“St. Louis, there was so much going on that year — the coach [getting fired] and all that stuff, and then (Jordan) Binnington comes up, it was a different kind of ride. But I feel like we’ve been a good team all year. We’ve earned the right to be in this spot. So there’s a sense of confidence that we carried going into this. But the reality is there’s a lot of guys that were… three wins away from winning it last time [for Vegas in 2018] who haven’t won it. So we have a good balance of experience and hunger.”
And the Knights have outstanding lineup balance, too, and all these things have made the series a mismatch so far.
Game 3 is Thursday in Sunrise, Fla. (Sportsnet and SN NOW).
Just as Pietrangelo said Tkachuk has come as advertised, so has Pietrangelo.
Except for a moment of madness in the second round, when Pietrangelo uncharacteristically chopped down on the wrists of Edmonton Oilers star Leon Draisaitl and was lucky to escape with a one-game suspension, the big defenceman has played the steady, dependable, superior hockey that led the Knights to blitz him in free agency.
The Knights already had an elite defenceman in Shea Theodore. But general manager Kelly McCrimmon, backed by team president George McPhee and owner Bill Foley, believed Vegas needed a “true No. 1 defenceman” like Pietrangelo.
Among the NHL’s top blue-liners, Pietrangelo’s game is one of the quietest. He isn’t dynamic like Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes, doesn’t pile up points like Erik Karlsson and Roman Josi, and isn’t as physically imposing as Victor Hedman.
But night after night, Pietrangelo plays a strong two-way game, making plays with the puck, using his size to protect the Vegas net and his positioning and smarts to disrupt the opposition. He and teammate Alec Martinez lead the playoffs in blocked shots with 48, and only Knights forward Mark Stone and his magic stick have more takeaways than Pietrangelo’s 22.
After a 54-point regular season that tied a career-high (but was only 15th in scoring among NHL defencemen), Pietrangelo has one goal and nine points (and a plus-10 goal differential at five-on-five) in 18 playoff games.
You can argue whether all that is worth $8.8-million a season, but the Knights have gotten exactly what they wanted with Pietrangelo. Well, they will get it as long as Vegas wins two more games against Florida.
“He’s a high-effort player,” Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said during his media availability on Sunday. “He’s certainly got skill and makes his plays, he’s got a good shot and good nose for the net. But I think his effort to block shots, to defend hard, clear the front of the net — those are some things I guess I’ve learned about Alex. I thought he was a little more the offensive-tilted guy, but he’s a full 200-foot guy. A harder player, I guess, than maybe I would have suspected watching him.”
“This was a good team before I got here,” Pietrangelo said. “Kelly and George have added some pieces, myself and a few other guys along the way they felt would give the team an even better opportunity. But credit to the guys who have been here, the guys who have been here from the start. They’ve been successful since Day 1. And there’s a reason why.
“We’re confident in what we do as a group. I wouldn’t say that you sit there and you say: ‘Oh, we have a chance to win (the Stanley Cup).’ I don’t think that was ever really the thought process. The thing about our group is we kind of go every single day, and then worry about what the next day is. We’ve dealt with the emotions of the playoffs really well because of that.”
And the emotions of the first two games of the Stanley Cup Final, when the Panthers have failed to goad the Knights into a street fight and Tkachuk, their best player, has been ineffective.
“You’ve got to worry about who you’re playing and where you are right now,” Pietrangelo said. “Experience helps, but I think sometimes you can overthink that experience because you’ve still got to go out and play the game. Because for all of us who are experienced, there’s guys who have never won it before and are just as hungry to win for the first time, right? But, you know, when you win it once, you want to win it again.”