The Canadiens’ Arber Xhekaj is envious of the Tkachuk brothers.
After watching Team USA brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk both drop the gloves and get into fights in the first three seconds of last Saturday’s 3-1 win over Team Canada in a 4 Nations Face-Off game at the Bell Centre, Xhekaj was wishing it was him and his brother, Florian, who could have performed a similar brother act first with the Canadiens.
“That was awesome,” Xhekaj said after the Canadiens practised Tuesday in Brossard. “(Brady) goes to see his brother in the box (after the first fight). To me, that’s like a dream come true. Me and my brother at the Bell Centre — they just got there before me and my brother. They beat us to it.”
The 6-foot-4, 240-pound Xhekaj is one of the NHL’s heavyweights when it comes to fighting. Florian, who is 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds, hasn’t been hesitant to drop the gloves as a rookie with the AHL’s Laval Rocket. In 44 games with the Canadiens’ top farm club, Florian has 12-5-17 totals and he leads the AHL with 117 penalty minutes. Arber has 1-4-5 totals in 53 games and leads the Canadiens with 83 penalty minutes, including five fighting majors.
After Matthew Tkachuk fought Canada’s Brandon Hagel and then brother Brady fought Sam Bennett in the first three seconds of the game against Canada, Team USA’S J.T. Miller dropped the gloves with Colton Parayko at the nine-second mark.
Brady was wearing a microphone for the game and after the fights he had an on-ice chat with referee Gord Dwyer during a break in play.
“Gord, what’s up?” Brady said.
“Hey, Brady, how we doing?” Dwyer responded.
“That was pretty cool, eh?” Brady said.
“Holy s—,” Dwyer responded. “What a start, man. That’s f—ing unreal.”
Xjhekaj described the start to the Canada-USA game as “electric.” The two teams will meet again Thursday at Boston’s TD Garden in the final of the 4 Nations Face-Off (8 p.m., SN, TVA Sports).
“I mean, there’s a lot of people that want fighting out of the game … they think it doesn’t have a place anymore,” Xhekaj said. “But that was as good as it gets. It was probably the most electric start to a game ever in hockey history, I think.”
This wasn’t the first time a Tkachuk got into a fight early in an international game between the U.S. and Canada.
Twenty seconds into a round-robin game at the 1996 World Cup of Hockey in Philadelphia, Keith Tkachuk — the father of Matthew and Brady — dropped the gloves with Canada’s Claude Lemieux, while teammate Bill Guerin fought Keith Primeau. Team USA won that game 5-3 and went on to win the tournament. Tkachuk had 5-1-6 totals in five games.
Guerin is now GM of Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off.
Xhekaj can relate to the Tkachuk brothers’ dynamic. Xhekaj and his brother are living together in Montreal.
“It’s been good, man,” Xhekaj said. “I love it. I haven’t seen him in a while because our schedules have been mismatched a little bit. But it’s been good. I help him whenever I can. We have dinner together, I watch his games. It’s pretty awesome.
“You can’t paint a better picture than that,” Xjhekaj added about being part of the same organization. “It’s pretty special and I hope he can be here soon with me and we can get it going together.”
Xhekaj said he loves playing against the Tkachuk brothers. Brady is captain of the Ottawa Senators and Matthew won the Stanley Cup last season with the Florida Panthers.
“We’re always going at it … we’re always chirping,” Xhekaj said. “I get under their skin, they get under mine. They play a similar style to me … it helps that they’re the best players on their teams, so it’s fun to play against them.”
Xhekaj wasn’t surprised to see Miller, who is 6-foot-1 and 218 pounds, drop the gloves against Canada’s Parayko, who is 6-foot-6 and 228 pounds.
“Miller will fight anybody,” Xhekaj said. “He’s one of those guys, win or lose, he doesn’t care. If he’s going down, he’s going down swinging. I have a lot of respect for that guy. I heard he was pissed because Brady fought before him and he wanted it. I saw him when they fought — Brady and Bennett — I saw Miller yelling at Parayko trying to get him to go.”
Fighting in international hockey is rare, but Team Canada coach Jon Cooper pointed out after last Saturday’s game that the 4 Nations Face-Off is an NHL event, not an IIHF event. Cooper also understands there are some fans who would like to see fighting taken out of the game.
“These guys have grown up with it, this is part of our game,” Cooper said. “At my last look, I didn’t see anybody running for the exits. People are going to talk about this and there’s probably people out there that don’t like it. But it kind of set up a heckuva game. And then when (the fighting) was over, for 59 minutes two teams battled each other as hard as they could.
“We’ll let the fans be the judge of that.”