Sports · NEWS EXPLAINER
Panthers make NHL history with a third straight natural hat trick
Carter Verhaeghe scored three consecutive Florida goals and Sam Bennett added another hat trick as the Panthers routed Seattle 8–3.
Carter Verhaeghe scored three consecutive Florida goals and Sam Bennett also had a hat trick as the Panthers beat the Seattle Kraken 8–3. Verhaeghe’s sequence made Florida the first NHL team to produce a natural hat trick in three consecutive games.
Brady Tkachuk recorded the natural hat trick in each of the previous two games. Against Seattle, Verhaeghe completed his in less than nine minutes across the first and second periods, while Bennett’s third goal set the final score and gave him 400 career NHL points.
Verhaeghe turned a 1–1 game into a 4–1 lead
Bennett opened the scoring at 1:05, but Shane Wright tied the game at 4:54. Verhaeghe then scored at 17:56 and again on the power play at 19:07 to send Florida into the first intermission ahead 3–1.
At 6:02 of the second period, Verhaeghe finished at the left post for his third straight Florida goal. The three goals arrived in 8 minutes 6 seconds, completing the natural hat trick and establishing the three-game team record.
Bennett supplied the second hat trick
Niko Mikkola scored 40 seconds after Verhaeghe’s third goal, and Bennett made it 6–1 at 13:13 of the second. Seattle answered through Frederick Gaudreau late in the period and Ryker Evans early in the third, but the margin remained decisive.
After Sam Reinhart’s power-play goal, Bennett finished a feed from Uvis Balinskis at 11:14 of the third period. It was his third goal of the night, the first two-hat-trick game in Panthers history and Bennett’s 400th career point.
The streak is more than three ordinary hat tricks
A natural hat trick means one player scores three consecutive goals by the player’s team, with no teammate or opponent interrupting the run. Brady Tkachuk did that in Florida’s prior two games before Verhaeghe repeated it against Seattle.
NHL.com reported that no team had previously recorded natural hat tricks in three straight games. Florida also became the first team in more than a century to produce at least four hat tricks before its 10th game of a season.
What the result changed
Florida improved to 5–2–2 and won its third consecutive game. Seattle fell to 5–3–1 but still completed its five-game road trip with a 3–1–1 record and seven of a possible 10 points.
The historic streak describes completed games, not a prediction. It does not guarantee another hat trick, a playoff place or a championship; Florida next begins a four-game road trip in Ottawa.
