Oh, brother! Brady Tkachuk gets traded to Florida to join Matthew Tkachuk

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Oh, brother! Brady Tkachuk gets traded to Florida to join Matthew Tkachuk

2026-06-22 08:17 Last Updated At：08:20

Matthew Tkachuk and Brady Tkachuk are about to team up in Florida, after the Panthers pulled off another summertime blockbuster.

The Panthers and Ottawa finalized a deal Sunday night, with Florida sending four draft picks to the Senators for Brady Tkachuk — the brother of Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk.

The picks were the No. 9 pick in this year's draft, Tampa Bay's first-round pick this year (acquired earlier Sunday in a trade Florida made sending Mackie Samoskevich to Seattle), the Panthers' second-round pick in 2027 and their top 10-protected first-round pick in 2029. And that means Florida adds an elite player to its forward corps without losing any of its top seven scorers from this past season.

“Brady is a dynamic competitor and one of the most physical and relentless forwards in the league,” Panthers hockey operations president and general manager Bill Zito said. “A proven leader and exactly the type of player we want in our locker room, he strives to make everyone around him better both on and off the ice. We’re thrilled to welcome Brady to South Florida to join our group as we continue our pursuit of championship hockey.”

Brady Tkachuk has spent the entirety of his eight-year NHL career in Ottawa, and now he joins his brother, Olympic teammate and podcast co-host in Florida — the place where Matthew Tkachuk has spent the last four seasons, winning two Stanley Cups and getting to the final three times.

The Athletic was first to report the pending trade.

Brady Tkachuk has two seasons left on the seven-year, $57.56 million contract he signed in October 2021 when he also became Ottawa’s captain. As recently as late April, he bristled at conversation about his name being in trade rumors following a first-round playoff exit.

“This was not a decision we took lightly, but ultimately we did what we felt was best for the long-term future of our hockey club,” Senators general manager Steve Staios said Sunday. “We now possess cap space and draft capital and will be actively working to improve our roster.”

It’s a move that makes sense for so many reasons and has seemed almost inevitable.

Matthew Tkachuk and Brady Tkachuk reveled in the chance to play alongside one another for USA Hockey at the 4 Nations Face-Off in 2025 (winning silver) and the Milan Cortina Olympics this year (winning gold, the first for the American men’s program on the Olympic stage since the miracle in Lake Placid 46 years ago).

Their parents — their dad is NHL legend Keith Tkachuk — have a home in Florida and are regular attendees at Panthers games, and the USA Hockey ties means Brady Tkachuk already has relationships with many in the Florida organization. Zito had a role within USA Hockey during this past Olympic cycle and Panthers equipment manager Teddy Richards had a role with the 4 Nations and Milan Cortina teams as well.

Brady Tkachuk was Ottawa’s captain for the last five seasons, and he was — by far in some cases — their leader in countless categories over his eight years with the Senators. No player had more goals (213), points (463), power-play goals (62), shots (2,202), hits (1,921), winning goals (28), multigoal games (30) and penalty minutes (821) in his tenure with the club, which acquired him with the No. 4 pick in the 2018 draft.

And now, four years after landing Matthew Tkachuk, the Panthers have tapped into the Tkachuk family well of talent again.

It also adds another big name to the list of players that Florida has locked up for several seasons going forward, including Aleksander Barkov, Aaron Ekblad, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Carter Verhaeghe, Gustav Forsling, Anton Lundell and others. They’re all Stanley Cup winners, and now Brady Tkachuk would figure to have a real chance to get his name etched onto hockey’s chalice in the coming years as well.

AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this report.

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Trump-backed de la Espriella holds razor-thin lead in Colombia's election as rival challenges vote

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Political outsider Abelardo de la Espriella held a razor-thin lead in Colombia’s presidential election with nearly all the votes counted Sunday, in a runoff vote marked by people’s fears of a renewed internal conflict.

A victory by de la Espriella would effectively be an indictment of the policies of outgoing P resident Gustavo Petro, whose protégé had promised to continue his agenda if he defeated his rival, who is backed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

De la Espriella, a businessman and lawyer who earned Trump’s endorsement despite never having run for office, led progressive lawmaker Iván Cepeda taking 49.7% of the votes, according to 99.9% complete results released by electoral authorities. Cepeda, Petro’s ally, earned 48.7% support. Election officials have not formally announced a winner.

Even before the result was known, Petro had already vowed to challenge it, and after the results were know Cepeda said his team will challenge results from more than 30,000 voting stations.

No recount has flipped the results of a presidential election in Colombian history.

People in the streets of Bogota yelled “Petro out! Petro out!” and honked car horns. Both pitched voters widely different strategies to prevent the South American country from experiencing the nonstop merciless violence, such as car bombs, kidnappings, disappearances and forced displacements, that Colombians lived with in previous decades.

De la Espriella, 47, promised a heavy-handed approach to crime-fighting, including drug trafficking. He also said he plans to end Petro’s attempts to establish parallel peace negotiations with multiple armed groups – an effort that has largely failed – and build mega-prisons, emulating Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele aggressive policies. Those tactics have lowered homicide rates in the Central American country but have fueled accusations of human rights abuses.

De la Espriella, nicknamed “The Tiger,” holds dual Colombian and U.S. citizenship, is a Trump supporter and a member of the Republican Party.

“We have had an armed conflict and a drug trafficking problem for too long, and this has greatly polarized the country,” retired economist Víctor Duque, 72, said while wearing a national soccer team jersey at a voting center in the capital, Bogota. “I believe it is one of the most important elections that has taken place in Colombia this century.”

In the first round, Cepeda earned 41% of the vote, while de la Espriella garnered 44%, according to official results. Petro, without evidence, sowed doubts in the results after Cepeda, who had consistently lead polls ahead of the May vote, did not win outright and even finished behind de la Espriella.

Petro reiterated his allegations on Sunday.

Yolanda Hernández, 49, voted early Sunday before she started selling black-ink pens outside a Bogota voting center. Clients, she said, buy the pens because ink cannot be erased from paper ballots, which reduces the possibility of fraud.

Hernández, who recycles trash for a living, voted for Petro in 2022, but cast her ballot for de la Espriella this time. While she acknowledged that Petro was unable to deliver on promises meant to help the poor because of congressional gridlock, she said Colombia cannot afford another four years under his vision for the country.

“We want change in Colombia because it’s always the same violence, always the same thing,” Hernández said. “(Petro) said he was going to lower the cost of services, that he was going to lower the price of food, and everything is more expensive.”

The election comes 10 years after Colombia signed a historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, that had offered hope to break the nation’s vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government.

But violence has since roared back, particularly as most rebel groups abandoned their ideologically driven fight for the financial benefits of drug trafficking.

Last year, authorities recorded 14,780 homicides, the most since at least 2015 and driven by clashes among illegal armed groups. Among those killed was conservative presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe. Extortions have also soared, reaching 13,417 cases in 2025, more than double the number tallied in 2015.

De la Espriella, a political newcomer nicknamed “The Tiger,” promised to fiercely go after criminals and build 10 mega-prisons, emulating the policies of El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele that have lowered homicide rates but have fueled accusations of human rights abuses.

Cepeda said he will carry on Petro's fraught signature plan to achieve “total peace” by negotiating pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs. The heavily criticized strategy that Petro kicked off in 2022 took until Thursday to see the first armed group — one with about 100 members — give up its weapons and begin a resettlement process that will lead to their reintegration into civilian life. Colombia's illegal groups have more than 27,000 members.

Fernando Lozano, 34, decided to vote for the first time in a decade because of the vastly different proposals between Cepeda and de la Espriella, particularly the latter's intentions to face off with armed groups.

“Anyone would think it’s not a bad thing to be able to end all this once and for all. But it’s not as easy as it seems,” Lozano said, adding that the combative approach already failed before and could only lead to more violence if tried again. “You can’t just go there and confront them and expect everything to be resolved in six months. That takes years.”