Brady Tkachuk’s Second Straight Natural Hat Trick, Capped in Overtime, Lifts Panthers Past Canucks 3-2

SUNRISE, Fla.

Some players need a month to find their scoring touch with a new team. Brady Tkachuk needed about eleven minutes of hockey, spread across the end of one game and the start of overtime, to write his name into a record book that had been closed since before colour television. Again.

For the second time in three nights, Tkachuk scored a natural hat trick — three consecutive goals, with nobody from either team scoring in between — and this one carried the Florida Panthers all the way back from 2-0 down to a 3-2 overtime win over the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night in Sunrise. Reuters reported that Tkachuk scored twice in the final nine minutes of regulation and completed the trick 2:23 into overtime. The Associated Press, via theScore, put it more simply: with one swipe of his stick in overtime, he gave Florida a victory, joined a very small group of Panthers, and claimed family bragging rights.

Down 2-0, then the Brady show

For most of the night, this was Vancouver’s game to lose, and the Canucks spent 51 minutes playing like they would not. Reuters reported that Liam Ohgren opened the scoring 7:23 into the first period, moments after Vancouver killed a Florida power play, finishing a feed from Linus Karlsson on the Canucks’ first shot of the game. Elias Pettersson added the second goal, and behind them Leevi Merilainen was having the kind of night that steals road games: 36 saves, according to Reuters, in a building where Florida kept pressing and getting nothing.

Then the game flipped. With 8:49 left in the third period, Tkachuk took an Aaron Ekblad drop pass and sent a one-timer past Merilainen, Reuters reported. The building woke up. Florida pulled goaltender Akira Schmid for an extra attacker late, and with 13 seconds left in regulation, Tkachuk got enough of a bouncing puck in traffic to tie the game 2-2. In overtime, Florida threatened from the start, and a streaking Tkachuk finished the job point-blank at 2:23. Schmid made 15 saves for Florida, and Seth Jones logged two assists, according to Reuters.

Third player in NHL history to do it back-to-back

Here is the company Tkachuk just joined. According to the Associated Press, he is the third player in NHL history — and the second in almost 40 years — to record natural hat tricks in back-to-back games. Petri Skriko did it for Vancouver in 1986, a nice irony given the opponent on Thursday, and Cy Denneny did it in 1923 for the original Ottawa Senators. That is the whole list, in more than a century of the league.

Zoom out one step and the feat is still rare air. Reuters reported that Tkachuk is the first player with a hat trick in back-to-back games of any kind since Toronto’s Auston Matthews in February 2024. The AP added that he joins Pavel Bure and Noel Acciari as the only Panthers with hat tricks in back-to-back games, and Reuters noted he is the second Panther to complete a hat trick in overtime, after Aleksander Barkov. His first of the two tricks came Tuesday at Columbus, a 7-3 Florida win in which, the AP reported, he scored all three goals in a span of 8:03 in the second period.

Family bragging rights, settled for now

The Tkachuks are hockey’s first family of chaos, and even in that house, nobody had done this. The AP reported that Brady is the first member of the family to score six goals in a two-game span. His father, Hall of Famer Keith Tkachuk, topped out at five goals in a two-game stretch, which he did three times. His brother Matthew, now his Florida teammate, has never had more than four in such a span. Thanksgiving dinner in the Tkachuk household just got a new agenda item, and Brady gets to chair the meeting.

Tkachuk, to his credit, tried to deflect it. “Today was pretty special,” he said, according to the AP, while stressing that his goal in Florida is to be part of something bigger than individual numbers. His coach was happy to say the quiet part. Panthers coach Paul Maurice, quoted by the AP, said the great players who have succeeded in big moments can feel the moment coming — they want it. On Thursday, with his team down two and the clock eating the season’s early momentum, Tkachuk plainly wanted it more than anybody else on the ice.

What it means for both teams

For Florida, the win makes it two straight victories for the first time this season and a 4-2-2 record, with the Seattle Kraken visiting Sunrise on Saturday. A week ago, the story around Brady Tkachuk’s arrival was a quiet start: no goals in his first games as a Panther after the blockbuster move from Ottawa. That story is over. Six goals in two games will do that.

For Vancouver, this one will sting on the flight out. The Canucks have lost six straight (0-5-1), per Reuters, and dropped to 0-4-1 on their six-game road trip — and they did it while their goaltender made 36 saves and they led by two goals with nine minutes to play. Teams do not lose games like that because of one player. But on Thursday, they lost this one largely because of one player, and his name is now next to Skriko and Denneny in the record book. Previously’s sports desk has the rest of the night’s action in our sports section, including Patrick Kane’s U.S. assists record and Connor Bedard’s first goal of the season.