As Matthew Tkachuk continues rehab, Panthers star starts a podcast with his brother
It will still be a little while until star winger Matthew Tkachuk will be back in game action for the Florida Panthers as he continues to recover from offseason surgery.
Until then, Panthers fans can hear him wherever they get their podcasts as he and brother Brady Tkachuk started their own podcast this week.
The weekly show, “Wingmen with Matthew and Brady Tkachuk,” formally launched Thursday and will have episodes every Wednesday. It is being produced by Wave Sports & Entertainment, which is the same company that puts out the “New Heights” podcast featuring Travis and Jason Kelce.
Speaking on ESPN’s “Pat McAfee Show” on Wednesday, Matthew Tkachuk said that he and his brother FaceTime each other a few times a week anyway, making the transition to a podcast pretty seamless.
“Now,” Tkachuk said. “We’re getting paid to do it once a week. Are you kidding me?”
Count Panthers coach Paul Maurice among those supporting the idea of the Tkachuks — two of the more outgoing and personable players in hockey — using their platform to expand the sport’s reach.
“When you love a team, when you’re fan, you buy a sweater, but you always throw a name on the back of that. You identify with a player, and it’s your favorite player. If he’s got a podcast, then you’re listening,” Maurice said after the team’s morning skate Thursday before they host the Washington Capitals to start a five-game homestand. “It’s just another really great way for connections between fans and the person. Now, I don’t know how this thing is going to go. They might be throwing punches five minutes into the first one — the first physical podcast — but it would be wonderful for people to get to know Matthew a little bit in the way I have.”
As for Tkachuk’s rehab process, Maurice said both he and captain Aleksander Barkov are “where they’re supposed to be.” Florida has five key contributrors — Barkov, Tkachuk, fellow forwards Tomas Nosek and Jonah Gadjovich, and defenseman Dmitry Kulikov — sidelined long-term.
Maurice said the hope is that Tkachuk, whose had surgery to repair a torn adductor muscle and sports hernia, will transition to the on-ice portion of his rehab process “in the next two weeks.” The initial timeline by president and hockey operations and general manager Bill Zito for Tkachuk’s was estimated to be some time in December.
Tkachuk, speaking on the Pat McAfee Show, said he feels “really good right now” and that he’s “on track if not better for my return here.”
“I don’t want to say we have a solid date,” Tkachuk said, “but we have a little two-week period where I’m planning to be back by.”
Barkov is recovering from surgery to repair the ACL and MCL in his right knee after sustaining an injury at the start of training camp in mid-September.
Nosek had knee surgery in the offseason and was deemed month-to-month at the start of training camp.
Kulikov had surgery in mid-October to repair a labral tear in his right shoulder that Maurice said has a five-month recovery time, shelving the defenseman until mid-March.
And Gadjovich is out for three months after undergoing surgery for an undisclosed upper-body injury earlier this week.
“For all five of our guys, there’s this block of healing time where there’s not much they’re doing,” Maurice said. “So they’re moving, right? They’re in the gym. They’re doing the basic stuff. And then when the doctor gets to that day and says, ‘OK, now you can go. Now you can start progressing,’ what happens? How fast they get back to playing after that will be conditioning. You go out, you push them on the ice, they come back a little more sore than you thought they would, then you back off a day, and then you go back, and they come back in, and they feel really good. Then you speed it up a day. ... I would say with all of them, I’ll give you a better idea once the first day they hit the ice because then we have a fairly good idea what the window is.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2025 at 11:40 AM.
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