Brady Tkachuk kept dragging the Florida Panthers across the finish line, and this time he did it in overtime.
Tkachuk scored all three Florida goals, including the winner 2:33 into overtime, as the Panthers beat the Vancouver Canucks 3-2 and picked up their first home victory of the season. It was his second straight hat trick, and by the end of the night he had turned a quiet start to the season into a full-blown scoring surge.
Florida needed every bit of it after digging itself into a two-goal hole in the first period. The Panthers spent much of the opening frame in Vancouver’s end and fired 15 shots at Leevi Meriläinen, but the Canucks made the most of their few looks.
The first one came at 7:23, when Florida tried to move the puck out of its zone and the play unraveled fast. Linus Karlsson knocked it away from Boko Imama, it ricocheted off Sam Lafferty’s skate, and Liam Ohgren ended up with a clean chance behind the defense.
Ohgren finished it along the ice past Akira Schmid before Niko Mikkola could get there to block it. It was Vancouver’s first shot of the game.
The Canucks added another before the period ended. With 2:54 left, Brock Boeser and Filip Chytil combined to win the puck from Aaron Ekblad in the right corner, and Chytil fed Elias Petterson (the defenseman) with a backhand centering pass. Petterson finished from between the circles to make it 2-0.
The second period slowed to a crawl, with Vancouver happy to stack the ice and make Florida work for everything. The Panthers had possession, but the Canucks kept them to the outside and looked for counter chances when they could.
The game opened up again in the third, and Florida started pressing hard. Schmid helped keep it a two-goal game by stopping a holdover penalty kill chance against Sam Reinhart, then flashing the glove on a high-end look from Louie DeBrusk. He also turned aside Jonathan Lekkerimäki’s one-timer from close range.
But the Panthers kept coming, and Brady Tkachuk finally cracked it open. At 11:00, Florida generated its 32nd shot of the night and got on the board after a setup from the Tkachuk brothers and Aaron Ekblad.
Sam Bennett started the sequence, Matthew Tkachuk fed Ekblad, and Ekblad moved it to Brady on the right side. Brady snapped it far side to cut the lead in half.
Then came the equalizer with 13 seconds left.
Seth Jones and Bennett worked a give-and-go to enter the zone, Jones helped keep possession, and Carter Verhaeghe slipped a pass to Tkachuk in the right circle under pressure. Tkachuk ripped it off the iron and in, sending the crowd at Amerant Bank Arena into a frenzy.
Florida carried that momentum into overtime, and Tkachuk finished the job. After an early chance in the extra session, he returned for a long shift later on. Reinhart and Tkachuk worked the puck back to Jones at center ice to keep possession, Jones sent it back to Brady, and after Jones drove to the net to screen Meriläinen, Tkachuk calmly wristed it home at 2:33.
Tkachuk’s night put him in some rare company. The last player to post back-to-back natural hat tricks was Petri Skriko in November 1986. He’s also the first NHL player to record consecutive hat tricks since Auston Matthews in February 2024.
For Florida, it marked a modest win streak and a massive swing in form for Tkachuk, who did not score in the first five games before erupting for six goals in his last two.
The game also had plenty of support around him. Matthew Tkachuk picked up the secondary assist on Brady’s first goal and extended his point streak to seven games. He’s tied for the team lead in assists with eight and leads the Panthers with 11 points.
Jones kept filling the stat sheet too, adding two assists to give him eight over the last three games. He logged a team-high 26:16 of ice time and fired five shots on goal.
Reinhart continued his own recent run with an assist and a three-game point streak after going scoreless in the first five games. He finished with five shots and a hit.
Bennett still hasn’t scored his first goal, but he was all over this one. He matched Brady Tkachuk with a game-high six shots, won 56.3% of his faceoffs and added two hits.
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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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