SUNRISE, Fla. - Brady Tkachuk has turned Florida into a hat collector’s nightmare.
In his first two games with the Panthers, the 27-year-old forward ripped off consecutive hat tricks and powered Florida to back-to-back wins, first in a 7-3 road victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday and then in a 3-2 overtime win against the Vancouver Canucks at Amerant Bank Arena on Thursday.
Against Columbus, Tkachuk piled up four points with three goals and an assist. Two nights later, he scored every Florida goal, including the tying marker with 11.8 seconds left in regulation before finishing the Canucks in overtime.
“He’s a true gamer,” teammate Seth Jones said. “I think he impacts, you know, he’s obviously scoring right now, but he impacts the game in so many ways -- with his physicality and his tenacity around the net. He played an unreal game tonight.”
The Panthers are now 4-2-2, and Tkachuk sits tied for fifth in the NHL with a team-high six goals.
What he’s doing has already landed him in some exclusive franchise company.
For starters, he’s the only player in Panthers history to record consecutive natural hat tricks. A natural hat trick means scoring three goals in a game without anyone else from either team scoring in between.
He also became just the second player in franchise history to finish a hat trick with an overtime game-winner. Aleksander Barkov is the only other Panther to do it, and he pulled it off twice - on Dec. 15, 2018, and again on April 19, 2022.
Tkachuk’s night against Vancouver came after a 2:19 shift before the equalizer late in regulation, a sequence made possible by stoppages and a timeout that left him with enough gas to keep pushing.
His stretch of two straight hat tricks also places him in a tiny Panthers club. Before him, only Noel “Cookie” Acciari and Pavel Bure had done it.
The list gets even more specific when you look at how Tkachuk started his Florida tenure. He joined Radim Vrbata, Dave Gagner and Ray Sheppard as the only Panthers to score three goals in their first game with the team after arriving from the Ottawa Senators in a blockbuster trade in June.
Tuesday’s explosion in Columbus was another piece of franchise history. Tkachuk’s three straight goals made him one of eight players to post a natural hat trick in Panthers history, joining brother Matthew Tkachuk, Carter Verhaeghe, Noel Acciari, Jonathan Marchessault, Steve Reinprecht, David Booth and Pavel Bure.
He got there fast, too. His hat trick against the Blue Jackets came in 8:03, a pace topped only twice in Panthers history by Noel Acciari and Steve Reinprecht.
The brother connection made it even rarer. Brady became just the ninth player in NHL history to score a hat trick with a brother assisting on all three goals, with Matthew setting up every one of the three against Columbus.
Zoom out, and the feat is even more striking. Prior to Thursday, the last NHL player to string together consecutive natural hat tricks was Petri Skriko of the Vancouver Canucks from Nov.
18-21, 1986. Before Skriko, it had happened only once more, when Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators did it from Feb.
21-24, 1923.
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Brady Tkachuks early-season production for the Panthers has gone from quiet to impossible to ignore. After a slow start, he has caught fire with consecutive hat tricks in back-to-back games, and his latest burst has him leading Florida with six goals in eight games while the team works through its opening-month rhythm.
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Brady Tkachuk gave the Panthers exactly the kind of jolt they needed, turning a sluggish night into a statement win with his second straight hat trick in Floridas 3-2 overtime victory over the Canucks. The Panthers had to climb out of a two-goal hole just to get to extra time, but Tkachuks night carried the tone of the comeback and helped deliver the clubs first home win of the season.
The performance also put Tkachuk in rare company, making him the third player in Panthers history to post consecutive hat tricks. It was the first time the NHL had seen back-to-back natural hat tricks since 2024, which is the sort of odd, eye-catching footnote that will keep fans talking long after the final horn, even if the bigger question in Sunrise is how sustainable this kind of offensive surge really is. [Read more 🡒]
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The run also adds another layer to a Panthers story already drawing plenty of attention, because this is not just about scoring volume but the timing and the company he has kept with it. He became the first NHL player since February 2024 to score hat tricks in back-to-back games, and his name now sits beside a small list of Panthers players who have done the same, giving Florida a jolt that looks even more unusual when you remember who was setting him up in the first one. [Read more 🡒]