The Tkachuk Show: Brady's Natural Hat Trick and Matthew's Five Assists Power the Panthers' 7-3 Rout in Columbus

There are nights when a hockey game turns into a family story, and Tuesday at Nationwide Arena was one of them. The Florida Panthers beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 7-3, and the Tkachuk brothers owned every inch of it: Brady Tkachuk scored a natural hat trick — Florida's first three goals of the game — while Matthew Tkachuk assisted on the Panthers' first five goals, his five assists tying a franchise record, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Start with the sheer oddity of the script. Columbus actually led this game. The Blue Jackets were up 1-0 after the first period, playing at home, with their crowd engaged and their structure intact. Then the second period arrived, Florida scored four straight goals, and the night belonged entirely to the visitors. The Columbus Dispatch noted the painful echo for the home fans: for the second straight game, Columbus led at the first intermission and lost anyway.

Brady's Natural Hat Trick Set the Terms

A natural hat trick — three consecutive goals by one player, uninterrupted by anyone else on either team — is one of hockey's rarest feats, and Brady Tkachuk produced it to open Florida's account. Per the Columbus Dispatch, it was the fourth hat trick of his career, and each goal seemed to arrive exactly when Columbus was trying to re-establish itself. Every time the Blue Jackets steadied, Brady was at the net front, in the slot, or finishing a feed from his brother. The night doubled as a coming-out party: Brady had only become a Panther in the summer, acquired from the Ottawa Senators on June 23, 2026, and after his first Florida point came a night earlier, on October 12 at Buffalo, the hat trick announced him properly.

And those feeds kept coming. Matthew Tkachuk's five assists — on Florida's first five goals — tied the Panthers' franchise record for a single game, a playmaking line that would headline almost any other night of the season. Together, the brothers were directly involved in the entirety of Florida's early scoring, a takeover so complete that the rest of the Panthers' lineup essentially played the supporting cast in a two-man show for the game's decisive stretch.

Verhaeghe and Reinhart Turned It Into a Rout

Once the Tkachuks cracked the game open, Florida's finishers poured through. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Reinhart each scored twice as the Panthers pulled away, completing a seven-goal night built on relentless power-play execution: Florida went 4-for-6 with the man advantage, a conversion rate that turns a competitive game into a coaching nightmare. Seth Jones added four assists from the blue line, quarterbacking a power play that Columbus simply never solved.

The goaltending change told the rest of the story. Cam Talbot was pulled after allowing six goals on 23 shots, with Jet Greaves finishing the game in relief — a hook that was less about blame than about stopping the bleeding on a night when Florida's attack came in waves. Akira Schmid started for the Panthers and had the far quieter evening, protected by a team that spent the decisive periods playing in Columbus's end.

Columbus's Bright Start, Same Old Ending

To their credit, the Blue Jackets' scorers showed up. Kent Johnson, Denton Mateychuk and Cole Sillinger each found the net, and a 1-0 first-period lead against the defending champions' core is not nothing. But the pattern the Columbus Dispatch identified — leading after one, losing by the end, two games running — is the kind that follows a young team until it learns to manage the middle period. Columbus's second periods are becoming a season-defining problem: four straight Florida goals in one frame is not a slump, it is a structural failure, and it handed the Panthers the game before the third period began.

The records now read Florida 3-2-2 and Columbus 2-3-0, and the gap between those lines feels larger than the standings suggest. Florida's power play is humming, its biggest names are producing in bunches, and on Tuesday it demonstrated the most valuable skill a contender owns: turning a road game that started badly into a blowout within twenty minutes. Columbus, meanwhile, has to find a way to make its good first periods matter — because right now, a lead at intermission is starting to feel like a warning instead of an advantage.

There is a final, simpler takeaway from a 7-3 game with a natural hat trick and a five-assist night in the same box score: nights like this are why the Tkachuk brothers are box office. One brother finished everything. The other created everything. Columbus got to watch both shows from the worst seats in the building.

One more detail worth filing away: Florida did all of this on the road, in a building where Columbus plays its most energetic hockey in the first period. Killing a home crowd's belief is a skill, and the Panthers practiced it ruthlessly — four second-period goals, each one quieter in the stands than the last. If this is what Florida's attack looks like when the Tkachuks are rolling at the same time, the rest of the Eastern Conference has a problem that no amount of game-planning fully solves.

Follow the early-season race on our NHL hub, read the rest of the night's action in the Frozen Frenzy rundown, and keep up with every score on the Sports front.

Correction (October 14, 2026): An earlier version of this story said Brady Tkachuk's hat trick was the fifth of his career; it was his fourth. The story also did not explain his presence in a Panthers jersey: Florida acquired him from the Ottawa Senators on June 23, 2026, a sentence that has been added. The photograph at the top of the story has been replaced: the original showed Brady from his Ottawa years, and the replacement shows Matthew Tkachuk — who assisted on all three of the hat-trick goals — in Panthers colours.