Cold Steel on Ice : Power Forward Tkachuk Has a Scorer’s Touch and Packs a Punch for the Coyotes

Keith Tkachuk of the Phoenix Coyotes plants his 6-foot-2, 210-pound body five feet in front of opposing goaltenders.

Then the battle begins.

The other team’s defensemen hammer Tkachuk with sticks across his back, legs and rear end. When that fails, they slam their bodies into him.

No luck.

He’s not budging.

When the puck inevitably winds up on his stick, goalies are at Tkachuk’s mercy. He just never seems to miss the net from point-blank range. The key, of course, is parking himself in such a dangerous position.

Tkachuk (say it: kuh-CHUK) is a brawler among the game’s finesse players, as comfortable dropping his gloves to fight as scoring a game-winning goal.

He’s good at both, but particularly at scoring goals. This season, he was the NHL’s leader with a career-high 52 goals.

But he also led the Coyotes with 228 penalty minutes, 28 more than enforcer Jim McKenzie. Only three other players in NHL history have scored 50 goals and recorded 200 penalty minutes in the same season.

“You can’t knock him down,” said Teemu Selanne, Mighty Duck right wing. “He’s going to be a key to the series for the Coyotes.”

Selanne, second in the league with 51 goals, knows all about Tkachuk. After all, they were linemates for more than three seasons with the Winnipeg Jets. Alexei Zhamnov, now with the Chicago Blackhawks, centered their line.

“He’s always working hard, playing hard,” Selanne said of Tkachuk, the Coyotes’ captain. “He’s a big strong guy. Most of his goals are rebounds and are from close range. He’s so good around the net because you just can’t knock him down.”

With Selanne and Zhamnov traded to Anaheim and Chicago, Tkachuk was introduced to new linemates Mike Gartner and Craig Janney, when the Jets moved to Phoenix after the 1995-96 season. He hasn’t missed a beat.

His strength is his strength, according to Duck Coach Ron Wilson.

“He plays with a determination that’s not duplicated in very many guys,” said Wilson, who was Tkachuk’s coach on the U.S. team that won the World Cup of Hockey championship in September.

Unlike most top goal-scorers, including Selanne, Tkachuk seems to relish the brutal combat in front of the net.

As much as he likes a good fight, Tkachuk last week found himself preparing for a distasteful, bare-knuckled courtroom brawl.

On the eve of the Coyotes’ regular-season finale, Tkachuk faced charges made by an Edmonton man that he made illegal bets on NFL games and possibly other professional sportingevents.

Tkachuk has denied the charges in court documents filed last week. The Coyotes say the man, a gambler named Rajesh Kummer Sabharwal, is trying to extort money from Tkachuk.

Sabharwal, who alleges Tkachuk used information he supplied to bet on games, won a $140,000 court judgment last week after Tkachuk failed to respond to a lawsuit. Tkachuk is fighting the judgment.

The NHL has looked into the charges against Tkachuk, who is alleged to have made bets between October 1995 and January 1996, but has no plans to pursue it further.

“There’s nothing to it,” Tkachuk told a Phoenix reporter last week. “It’s all bull.”

Phoenix center Cliff Ronning doesn’t believe the legal fight will affect Tkachuk’s play. Ronning expects Tkachuk to maintain his relentless style of play, when the Coyotes’ best-of-seven playoff series against the Ducks begins tonight at the Pond of Anaheim.

“Nothing bothers him,” Ronning said.

Wilson put it this way: “He lives, breathes and dies hockey. It’s his life.”

Tkachuk played high school hockey in Malden, Mass., a Boston suburb, spent one season at Boston University, then joined the 1992 U.S. Olympic team. At 19, he was the youngest player on the squad.

“You could just see he had talent,” said Duck Joe Sacco, a teammate on the Olympic team. “He had a lot of raw talent, but it wasn’t refined yet. He’s really developed into a good scorer. We’ll have our hands full with him.”

Tkachuk joined Winnipeg, which drafted him on the first round in 1990, for the last half of the 1992 season. The next season, he had 28 goals, 23 assists and 201 penalty minutes. Tkachuk might have gained more league-wide acclaim, but Selanne overshadowed him by setting an NHL rookie record with 76 goals.

Although they play with far different styles, Selanne continues to be a big Tkachuk fan.

“We were clicking really well together at the end of our three years together,” said Selanne, traded Feb. 7, 1996, to the Ducks for Oleg Tverdovsky and Chad Kilger. “I’ve always been lucky to play with great players, in Winnipeg with Keith and Zhamnov and here with Paul [Kariya] and [Steve] Rucchin.”

Wilson is another who admires Tkachuk. Wilson believes Tkachuk’s struggles to change perceptions that he was a poor skater and puck-handler ignited his drive to succeed.

“A lot of people questioned whether he’d make it to the next level because he was not a great skater in high school,” Wilson said. “There were a lot of doubters out there. He wasn’t a good skater and he was kind of clunky with the puck.

“[But] he set out to overcome that, and that determination got him here.”