Friday Fellow: Keith Tkachuk

Lady Bee: “I’m doing a post for Ladies… on Keith Tkachuk!”

Mr. Bee: “Why?”

Lady Bee: “Well, he’s retiring!”

Mr. Bee: “It’s about time! Is Bill Guerin joining him?”

(Lady Bee rolls eyes, proceeds to find handsome pictures anyway)

Keith Tkachuk will play his final professional hockey game tonight after 18 seasons in the NHL with the St. Louis Blues, 10 minutes with the Atlanta Thrashers and the Winnipeg Coyotes.

The former Boston University Terrier was a first round pick of the Jets in 1990, a class that also included Owen Nolan, Jaromir Jagr and Martin Brodeur (unrelated to this post, but I find it kind of funny that Toronto’s first pick that year was ahead of Winnipeg’s and New Jersey’s and they went with Drake Berehowski.) His highest scoring season occurred in 1995-96, his team’s last year in balmy Winnipeg before moving to that cold wasteland in Arizona, when he recorded a 98 point-50 goal performance (he had back-to-back 50-plus goal seasons, in fact.)

After nine seasons with the organization, the Coyotes traded him to St. Louis in 2001 for Ladislav Nagy and a milk crate full of practice pucks. Tkachuk managed to pull off a few more 70-plus point seasons as well as a few playoff appearances (having picked him for a few hockey playoff pools, I will not call those terrific memories.)

Tkachuk is also a four-time Olympian, winning silver in 2006 at the Salt Lake City Winter Games with Team U.S.A. (which I remember fondly, for obvious reasons.)

The five-time All-Star will skate away with a career 1,063 points including 538 goals, in 1,201 games. I’m not a Blues fan, but I will miss those baby blues.