SUNRISE - The Florida Panthers didn’t just beat the Seattle Kraken on Saturday night. They kept doing something the NHL had never seen before.
With Carter Verhaeghe finishing off a natural hat trick, Florida became the first team in league history to produce a player with a natural hat trick in three straight games. Brady Tkachuk had done it in the previous two, and Verhaeghe picked up the streak on a night when the Panthers rolled to an 8-3 win for their third consecutive victory.
They weren’t done there. Sam Bennett also completed a hat trick, turning the night into a full-blown scoring avalanche.
The Panthers jumped in front almost immediately, getting Bennett’s first goal of the season at 1:05 of the opening period. Matthew Tkachuk’s shot created the chance, and Bennett cleaned up the rebound to give Florida a lead it had not held first in a game outside the opener in Carolina, when it scored the overtime winner.
Seattle answered quickly to make it 1-1, but the Panthers took control from there and never let go. Florida had already shown this kind of burst once this week, too, after putting up seven goals in Tuesday’s 7-3 win over Columbus. Saturday was even more of the same.
Verhaeghe set the tone late in the first period. He scored at 17:56 to put Florida back in front, then struck again at 19:07 on the power play to send the Panthers to the intermission with a 3-1 cushion. Early in the second period, he finished the hat trick at 6:02 for a 4-1 lead.
By then, the floodgates were open.
Niko Mikkola added a goal and an assist, and Sam Reinhart also chipped in with a goal and an assist. Bennett scored again at 13:13 of the second period, with Brady Tkachuk setting him up on the rush, and the Panthers kept building distance on the Kraken.
The third period brought more history and more production. Matthew Tkachuk, who finished with three assists, fed Reinhart for a power-play goal at 2:25 to push the lead to 7-2. He later exited after colliding with Bennett late in the game.
Matthew Tkachuk’s night still carried plenty of significance beyond the final result. He extended his point streak to eight games and joined Sasha Barkov as the only Panthers to record at least 10 assists within their first 10 games of a season. He also factored on a goal with Brady Tkachuk for the third straight game, making them the first pair of brothers to do that since Daniel and Henrik Sedin in 2018.
The scoring pattern was relentless after the opening minutes. Seattle’s Shane Wright tied the game at 1-1 in the first period, but Florida answered with three goals before the first intermission, then kept pouring them on in the second. Mikkola’s goal came at 6:42, Bennett’s second at 13:13, and Freddy Gaudreau added one for Seattle at 19:05 to make it 6-2 entering the third.
The night also went into the record book for the Panthers. Their run of hat tricks in three straight games was a franchise first. Over the last 30 years, only the Maple Leafs in 2024 and the Capitals in 2010 had done it as a team.
For the Panthers, though, the story was simpler than the history: goals came fast, came often, and came from everywhere.
In Other News...
Panthers Suddenly Need More From A Recall Than Just One Night
With the roster already thin because of injuries and salary cap constraints, the Panthers turned to Charlotte for another body and brought up winger Cole Reinhardt for their game against Seattle. It is the kind of move Florida has had to make more often than it would like, and Reinhardt is at least familiar with the job after appearing in 15 games for the club last season, when he chipped in six goals and two assists.
For a team trying to piece together a workable lineup, the recall is about more than covering one night on the schedule. Florida needs depth wherever it can find it, and Reinhardts promotion gives the staff another forward to lean on while the health situation remains unsettled. What happens after this game could tell the bigger story, because the Panthers may need to keep leaning on that depth longer than expected. [Read more 🡒]
Panthers Exposed A Problem Columbus Coach Is Now Owning
The Blue Jackets are back on the practice ice after a loss, but the mood around Columbus has been more corrective than encouraging as Rick Bowness tries to steady a team heading into back-to-back games against the Rangers and Wild. The focus has shifted quickly to structure, pace and the basics of defending, because the early numbers have been ugly enough to demand it. Columbus sits near the bottom of the league in goals against, and the penalty kill has been a particular sore spot as the club searches for a way to stop bleeding chances.
Bowness did not hide his frustration with how the team has defended, saying the group needs sharper practices and better special teams play to climb out of its opening stretch. For the Panthers, the connection is obvious: Florida already showed how costly those breakdowns can be, and Columbus is now openly treating that lesson as a warning sign. The Blue Jackets still have time to clean it up, but the issue is no longer subtle, and Bowness is making sure everyone in the room knows it. [Read more 🡒]
Brady Tkachuk Is Doing Something Panthers Fans Rarely Ever See
Brady Tkachuk has spent the past two games giving Panthers fans a rare kind of offensive show, piling up natural hat tricks in back-to-back outings and helping drive Florida to a pair of recent wins. It is the sort of scoring burst that instantly stands out on any night, but especially for a team that has not often seen one player take over a stretch of games quite like this.
The run also pushed Tkachuk into a very small corner of NHL history, the kind of company that usually comes with a hot hand and a little bit of everything clicking at once. One of the more intriguing parts of it is the family connection around the goals, with Matthew Tkachuk involved on the scores in one of the games, adding another layer to a stretch Florida fans will be talking about for a while. [Read more 🡒]