CALGARY — Brad Treliving got the call on a Sunday morning in July while sitting in his home office.
Matthew Tkachuk, a player Treliving drafted No. 6 in 2016 and watched become an All-Star and 40-goal scorer, had no interest in signing long-term with the Calgary Flames. He wanted to play elsewhere.
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Tkachuk’s decision was compounded by the fact that fellow All-Star Johnny Gaudreau bolted for the Columbus Blue Jackets as a free agent days earlier.
“You’re disappointed and you’re mad when you get the news,” the Flames GM said. “But you’ve got to move through that quickly and say, OK, now how do we put together a game plan?”
Treliving worked with Tkachuk and his agent/uncle Craig Oster on potential options over the next few days. On July 22, five days after the first call, Tkachuk was on his way to the Florida Panthers along with a conditional fourth-round pick in 2025. The Flames received Jonathan Huberdeau, MacKenzie Weegar, prospect Cole Schwindt and a conditional first-round pick in 2025. As part of the sign-and-trade, Tkachuk landed a contract for eight years and $76 million.
The deal is seen as the first of its kind in the NHL.
“It was probably a pretty stressful couple of hours,” Tkachuk said. “On top of it all, I couldn’t tell anybody. I did tell my parents, but other than that, I couldn’t tell anybody.”
Ahead of the Flames playing the Panthers on Saturday — the first matchup between the two teams since the trade — The Athletic spoke with Treliving, Panthers GM Bill Zito, Huberdeau’s agent Allan Walsh and each player involved in the transaction to learn what happened before, during and after the summer-defining blockbuster.
Tkachuk asks out
Matthew Tkachuk: Throughout the summer, that was the big talk with me and my representatives on the potential options of what I put myself (through) on the contract. That’s what I came to. Once I came to that realization, I owed it to (Treliving) to have an honest talk and tell him why and what I’ve been thinking. Once I realized what I wanted, I didn’t want to string him along for months or a year. I had that talk with him. It was tough, but he obviously understood.
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Brad Treliving: It was an emotional discussion. Later in the day, Craig and I had a talk. And then we had another talk and sort of said, OK, let’s start to put some framework together of how we want to go about this process.
Tkachuk: Wherever I was going, I wanted to be there for as long as possible.
Treliving: When Matthew and his representative told us what their intentions were, they gave us a list of teams. We went to work on it immediately.
The best interest for the Calgary Flames and for Matthew was to maximize his own contract. We all know the advantage a team has of signing their own player, they get paid eight years versus seven. We wanted to maximize the asset value with Matthew, and that was going to be eight years.
While both Treliving and Tkachuk declined to reveal the list of interested teams, The Athletic has reported that the Blues, Lightning and Hurricanes were among the teams on Tkachuk’s list. The Panthers jumped into discussions within a day or two of the trade’s completion.
Bill Zito: As talented and as good as Jonathan Huberdeau and (Weegar) are as players, you know that they’re that good as people as well. They’ve represented this franchise so well and they’re class acts, and they’re wonderful people. It’s difficult. It’s a hard thing to do.
Treliving: When we started talking about the people we had interest in, with Jonathan and MacKenzie and that type of package, we were very interested right from the beginning. I give Bill Zito a lot of credit. We weren’t wasting time. Obviously, he had to do his due diligence and (figure out) the financial component. (He) had to feel out how this would work.
Zito: I remember in our pro meetings, we were joking about Tkachuk. When we had gone through the Calgary players, somebody had said, “Boy, oh boy, if we could ever get a guy like Tkachuk.” That stuck in my head. When I got that first phone call, I was like, are you kidding me?
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Tkachuk: (South Florida) is one of my favorite places to visit. But I didn’t really know too much about it. And then, talking with Bill, I talked with Roberto Luongo. I talked to a lot of past and current players about it. Everybody just couldn’t talk enough about how great it was.
Zito: He was very gracious. He had done a lot of homework. He knew an awful lot about our team. … I was really impressed by his knowledge of our team.
Tkachuk: My uncle Craig told me to be around just in case something happens. You never know. I thought that it could’ve been done the day after I talked to Brad. I didn’t even know for sure if I was going to be traded or if anything was going to happen. … Obviously, I didn’t really listen to that. I went to the beach without my phone. Then, I came back and there was nothing. I don’t know where I went after that, but I was gone. Still didn’t have my phone on me. Finally, got a call on somebody else’s phone. It was Craig telling me there was a deal in the works with Florida. It’s pretty close to a done deal.
Treliving: It was agreed to and both sides agreed to it at about 2:15 p.m. (Mountain Time). We had to wait on it seven and a half, eight hours because we were doing a sign-and-trade. The league had to kind of wrap their head around how they were going to do this. We had to get a contract done.
Zito: Any time you complete a trade, there’s a trade call. … So, you have a call at the league and they go through all the details. They say, Calgary, do you understand this? Yes. Florida. Do you understand this? The league goes through all the records, they research everything and make sure.
Tkachuk: Florida was my dream destination. It’s where I wanted to go the whole time. Once (we) started talking to them, it was an automatic slam dunk. I obviously couldn’t be happier, I’m more happy now than I thought I’d be. When I was told I was going there in the afternoon, I was so pumped. But then I got another call saying that it’s going to the league and it might take a few hours and it might not happen, they might not even allow it.
Matthew Tkachuk and Jonathan Huberdeau playing against each other for their former teams in 2019. (Sergei Belski / USA Today)
The trade
Sure enough, the sign-and-trade went through late that night. Everyone involved has a different story of how they found out.
Allan Walsh: I was having a late Friday night dinner with my family. I have my phone next to me like I always do.
Jonathan Huberdeau: I was at a hockey game that Friday night with my buddies. We were just having a beer in a parking lot after and just talking. That’s when, at 11:00 at night, that’s when I got the call.
Zito: I don’t think it would be anything that I would share because it would be personal.
Huberdeau: I was shocked and, obviously, disappointed. I gave a lot to this organization. I think the respect they gave me, I think I deserved a little bit more.
Walsh: I see Jonathan Huberdeau calling me. Right away, I calculate. Friday night. 8 p.m. L.A., 11 p.m. in Montreal. Hmm. Right away, Spidey senses are tingling. I answered the phone, “Hey Jo, everything OK?” And he said, “I don’t know, I think I was just traded to Calgary?” I said, what do you mean you think? And he said, “Well, Bill Zito called me and said I was traded to Calgary. Is it true?”
Huberdeau: I know it’s a business and I know that’s how it happened. You can’t really tell that he was going to trade me. But (Bill) kind of told me 10 words, that was it.
Walsh: I could tell that he was very much in shock. I said don’t go anywhere. Stay on your phone. I’ll call you back in 30 seconds. I got off the phone and I immediately called Brad Treliving.
Treliving: I said, “We just traded for Jonathan Huberdeau.”
Walsh: I said, really?
Treliving: Normally, especially for a trade of this magnitude, you would talk to the agent beforehand. We didn’t go through that process. We needed this to be very tight.
Huberdeau: (Treliving) gave me some time to breathe after the trade. He knew it was kind of hard for me.
Walsh: I got off the phone with Treliving and called Jonathan back right away. I told him, “Yup, it’s true.” I just spoke to the GM in Calgary and here’s the deal. And Jonathan didn’t know what the deal was. So, I told him the deal. And he was like “Oh, (Weegar) is coming with me?”
Huberdeau: I think Allan and Bill talked at the draft. (Bill) said he was going to offer something, an extension. Obviously, he never did. But that’s business. I think they had it in their mind that they were going to trade me. That’s what I think.
Treliving: MacKenzie was somewhere.
MacKenzie Weegar: I was in Mont-Tremblant with my mom and my sister. It was a great weekend actually to go and get traded, I guess if you were to say. We went to the spa. It was a very relaxing trip.
Treliving: He didn’t have his phone working, right off the bat.
Weegar: When I got the call, my mindset was fresh. I took it well. It was late at night, obviously. I just went outside and sat there on a rock for a bit. Called everybody I possibly could close to me and let them know I was going to get traded. … They didn’t really give me specifics. After I made phone calls, my mom texted me. She goes “You know who was with you?” I said, “No.” She told me, “Huby.” Yeah, my mom told me. She must’ve seen it on Twitter or whatever.
Treliving: Cole Schwindt was on a fishing trip. There was no cell service.
Cole Schwindt: I was up in the Sault with my best friend, Cole MacKay. I was back in the bush, no service, on the day of the trade. Trade went through at 10:30 at night and the generator went off at 9.
Treliving: I had to talk to his agent. We didn’t talk to Cole until the next day.
Schwindt: The Friday night, I didn’t know about it. Went to bed, had no idea.
Treliving: They got a note to him saying, basically, get to some cell service. You’ve got some news you need to be aware of.
Schwindt: Woke up Saturday morning, the generator flipped back on and a text came through saying I got traded. Quickly went back into town, got some service and made a couple of phone calls. All things considered, it went very smooth.
Tkachuk: At dinner that night, celebrating my brother (Brady) and his fiancee’s engagement, I finally got the news. Everything blew up from there. It was a really, really crazy night. Everybody there was super happy for me even though I might’ve ruined his dinner a little bit. But we had a nice time the night before, so he wasn’t too upset about it.
Treliving: What did I do after it was all done? Sat in my office and had a beer. That whole week was as mentally exhausting as any week in my career.
Zito: I probably went to bed. It was late at night, I’m thinking. Maybe watched some TV. That’s a good question.
Jonathan Huberdeau with the Calgary Flames. (Sergei Belski / USA Today)
Huberdeau commits to Calgary
Less than two weeks after being acquired by the Flames, Huberdeau met with Treliving and Don Maloney, the Flames’ vice president of hockey operations. The three had dinner in downtown Montreal at Bar George before Huberdeau signed an eight-year deal of his own.
Huberdeau: (Treliving) reached out and said, “I’d like to get to know you and come and see you.” I thought it was pretty cool that he took the time to come and see me in the summer. He could’ve asked me to go (to Calgary) but then he just came, took a plane and came to see me. Quick dinner, two hours. But I think it was needed. That was great of him to do that.
Treliving: I think Allan picked out Bar George.
Huberdeau: I ate beef tenderloin and wellington.
Treliving: When you think about it, his world had been kind of turned upside down. Let’s just have some time to visit and get to know, and get a feel for us and get a feel for him. We had never spent any time together. When you think about it, all of a sudden, you know, we’re talking about marrying here and we hadn’t really dated.
Huberdeau: The team that was built here by (Treliving), they want to win right now.
Walsh: That was something very important to Jonathan. Brad made it clear that they wanted Jonathan. Brad pursued it with Florida. Jonathan felt wanted and needed, appreciated and respected. And that was very, very important to him.
Huberdeau: I wanted to get over coming here and being half in and wondering where I’m going. Am I coming here until the trade deadline? They traded for me, so I think if (they) want to keep me I’m all in for that.
Treliving: Part of it from our end was just to try to get Jonathan comfortable with who we were. Tell him a little bit about our program. You know, just have them meet us and ask questions, feel comfortable and find out about his family. It wasn’t this big hockey meeting.
Huberdeau: We had a great time, great talks. After that, I felt pretty positive that we could get a deal done.
Treliving: Allan and I went to work and arm wrestled over for a bit and ended up getting the deal.
Walsh: We had many, many conversations and emails and text messages going back and forth intensely for a five- or six-day period after he met with Jonathan in Montreal for dinner, and both sides felt comfortable pursuing a long-term deal. …(Huberdeau) and I had a conversation. I remember him saying, why not Calgary? Like, is there something out there that I need to chase at this point in my career? When I have a team that’s committed to winning now, that really wants me? Why not Calgary?
Matthew Tkachuk with the Florida Panthers. (Jasen Vinlove / USA Today)
The aftermath
Treliving: We feel good about it. A trade of this significance, when you’re talking of players of this caliber, they don’t happen very often.
Zito: It’s Matthew Tkachuk. I guess all roads lead back to that player. If you’d asked me two weeks before the trade did I think we would be getting Matthew Tkachuk, I would have said “I’m surprised.”
Schwindt: I think for me it was exciting waking up that morning and finding out something that’s pretty life-changing. As a player, to get here and feel comfortable right away with the coaching staff and all the players around you, that’s meant all the difference with me.
Walsh: I think players really want to go where they’re wanted.
Huberdeau: It took a little bit of time, but I’ve turned the page. I’m here and I’m excited for this new chapter.
Weegar: I never posted anything about my time in Florida or sent an Instagram post or a Twitter post about how thankful I am. But I am thankful for all my time there and all the fans there. But at the same time, I couldn’t be happier to be here and have a fresh start here in Calgary.
Tkachuk: I worked as hard as I could there (in Calgary), on and off the ice. … Obviously, not being able to win a Stanley Cup is something that’s going to hurt. I really, really, really enjoyed living there and playing there was six of the best years of my life.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic. Photos, clockwise from top left, Matthew Tkachuk by Eliot J. Schechter; Brad Treliving by Derek Leung; Jonathan Huberdeau by Jeff Vinnick; MacKenzie Weegar by Gerry Thomas; and Bill Zito by Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)