It's no secret the Los Angeles Kings' Drew Doughty and Calgary Flames forward Matthew Tkachuk aren't huge fans of each other. So when Doughty's teammate Ben Hutton got the defenseman for the team's Secret Santa gift exchange, he came up with the perfect present: a signed stick from Doughty's rival.
"I might be ruining it, saying this because he (Doughty) still doesn’t know it’s me,” Hutton said on The Athletic's "Point Breakaway" podcast. “If he listens to this, he’ll know that for Secret Santa I ended up getting him a Matthew Tkachuk stick.
“It was signed by him and everything. I wrote a little message on it. He (Doughty) was going around the locker room trying to figure out who it was. None of the boys were snitching on me. So that was pretty good.”
The rivalry dates back to Tkachuk's rookie season in 2016-17, when he was suspended for two games for elbowing Doughty in the head. The two have exchanged insults on numerous occasions, with Doughty saying he has "no respect" for Tkachuk, to which the youngster responded that he doesn't care and will still "sleep like a baby."
Hutton also revealed Tkachuk was in on the gag. Despite the beef, the 22-year-old was willing to participate.
“I got our trainers to do it,” Hutton said. “We were flying to Calgary when we were doing (the Secret Santa gift exchange), so it just clicked in my head. I asked our trainers, and once they told (Tkachuk) who it was for, he was all for it.”
Doughty may have gotten the short end of the stick by being kept in the dark, but it's still good to see two rivals knowing how to have fun with one another.
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