Wild, Canucks deliver NHL’s first three-hat-trick game since 1992
The Minnesota Wild and Vancouver Canucks couldn’t stop scoring goals on Monday.
The two teams had a crazy game that featured a hat trick of hat tricks from J.T. Miller, Joel Eriksson Ek and Kirill Kaprizov, and nine goals in the third period, including seven by the Wild, as Minnesota went on to win the game 10-7.
The game started off relatively normally, with Ian Cole and Miller giving the Canucks a 2-0 lead before Eriksson Ek cut that lead in half before the end of the first period. Elias Pettersson and Miller gave the Canucks a 4-1 lead in the second, with Matt Boldy responding for the Wild before Miller completed his hat trick to make it 5-2. Mats Zuccarello scored in the final minute of the second period, but things still seemed normal at this point.
It was the third period where things went off the rails. Along with Zuccarello’s second period goal, Eriksson Ek completed his hat trick with two goals, Kaprizov got two of his own, and Marco Rossi scored one somewhere in all that to give the Wild six straight goals and an 8-5 lead. Nikita Zadorov and Brock Boeser tried to mount a comeback for the Canucks and made it 8-7, but empty net goals from Brodin and Kaprizov, which completed the Novokuznetsk, Russia product’s hat trick, secured the 10-7 win.
Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek both had three assists to go with their hat tricks for six points on the night, while Miller had an additional assist for four points. Boldy and Zuccarello also had three assists with their goals for four points, while Pius Suter also put up three assists. Casey DeSmith finished the night with a .680 save percentage for the Canucks, while Filip Gustavsson had a .688 save% and Marc-Andre Fleury closed out the game with a respectable .750 save% for the Wild.
Miller, Eriksson Ek and Kaprizov’s hat tricks were the first time a team has scored three hat tricks in a game since 1992. That game saw Jari Kurri, Luc Robitaille and Mike Donnelly combine for three hat tricks for the Los Angeles Kings in their 11-4 win over the San Jose Sharks.
The Wild’s seven third-period goals was also the sixth time a team has done so in the 2000’s, and it’s now happened in four straight seasons. It’s also not the first time that this has happened to the Canucks this millennium, as the Buffalo Sabres (in a 7-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2006-07 season), the New York Islanders (in a 7-4 win over the Canucks in the 2013-14 season), the New York Rangers (in a 9-0 win over the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2020-21 season), the St. Louis Blues (in an 8-3 win over the Nashville Predators) and the Florida Panthers (in a 9-5 win over the Montreal Canadiens) have all done it in that span.