SERAVALLI: How Lightning’s Pat Maroon is Chasing Hockey’s Ultimate ‘Natural’ Hat Trick

TAMPA, Fla. — A natural hat trick is rarely seen in the wild that is an NHL regular season. There is only six or so per regular season over a 1,200-plus game run.

But Lightning forward Patrick Maroon is gunning for a different type of natural hat trick, one that’s decidedly more rare: three consecutive Stanley Cups. He helped his hometown St. Louis Blues hang their first-ever championship banner in 2019 before reuniting with old coach and mentor Jon Cooper to do it again in 2020 with Tampa Bay in the Edmonton bubble.

No one since members of the 1980s New York Islander dynasty has won three in a row.

Rarer still is that Maroon is on the precipice of hoisting three straight silver chalices with two different teams. Only two men in the history of hockey have done it: Ed Litzenberger (1961-63 with Chicago and Toronto) and inaugural Hall of Famer Eddie Gerard (1920-22 with Ottawa and Toronto).

In other words, Maroon can become the first player in the Expansion Era (post-1967) to win three Stanley Cups in three years with two different franchises.

Not bad for a former roller hockey player from St. Louis whose pro hockey career almost never got off the ground.

“It’s exciting,” Maroon said Sunday on Media Day, the eve of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. “It’s not done yet, but it’s cool to be in a category like that. I’m blessed to have that opportunity to be a part of two really good runs the last two years and now the third one this year.”

Maroon, 33, said Tampa Bay’s singular focus this season has been on repeating.

The “Big Rig” is the life of the party. Just look at the photos from past celebrations. But the motivation hasn’t just been to do it again because it’s fun – but because the Lightning’s win while sequestered in Alberta a year ago amid the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic limited the ‘true’ Stanley Cup experience.

Families couldn’t be there to see it happen, to experience the emotion of it all on the ice. Players’ days with the Cup were limited in size and scope. Heck, even the celebration in Tampa was limited to a well-distanced boat parade.

Maroon was the only one who knew the difference between that and the real deal. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t the same. He’s wanted his teammates to experience it all again – the right way.

“We’re eager to win and do it again, to win with some normalcy,” Maroon told DailyFaceoff.com in an interview at the beginning of the playoffs. “We’ve talked about it. We want to do it with fans, with a full building, to celebrate the Cup.”

He added Sunday: “Once you have that Stanley Cup, there’s no other feeling like it and you just want more of it. You want to spend time with it. You want to party with it. You want to see the smiles on each others’ faces and just the sweat and the work that we put in every single day.”

Maroon downplayed his role in Tampa Bay’s success. He said with a smile that “he’s just there” and mostly he’s “lucky to play with such good guys.”

Underestimate his impact at your own peril. Yes, Maroon’s ice time has dipped in the playoffs to just nine minutes a night this postseason, well short of his 13:29 average over 116 career playoff contests. He has one goal and two assists in 18 playoff games this spring.

But he helps drag his teammates into the fight. See: the double bird he flipped at the Florida Panthers’ bench heading into Round 1, or the fact he’s seemingly always in the middle of every scrum, jawing and jabbing after the whistle. Maroon has played his role as agitator and physical force to perfection.

“Pat has brought a lot of leadership since joining the team. Poise, calm, to be not too high or too low after a loss,” teammate Yanni Gourde said Sunday. “On the ice, it’s his physical side, toughness. He wins all of his one-on-one battles. He’s excellent below the goal line. He’s so strong physically. You know what he brings every night and you know what his strengths are, so you try to use those to the maximum.”

Maroon has become hockey’s latest ideal iteration in the evolution of the “enforcer.” He isn’t there to fight. He certainly isn’t averse to it. And he has skill and the ability to score clutch goals.

“I just try to make sure our team feels big going into games and making sure we feel good and we can have pushback too, and have that energy,” Maroon said. “And if it’s chirping, getting in guys’ faces, fighting … whatever I need to do.”

It’s why Maroon is a serial winner. He may not be a first line contributor but he is a first line teammate. Maroon said his wife recently pointed out that he’s missed the playoffs once in his eight full NHL seasons – and that was only due to a late-season trade to Edmonton. His teams have won 11 playoff rounds over seven appearances.

Maroon only has one hat trick in his NHL career. This would be his first natural one – and hockey’s ultimate hat trick.

If he’s looking for a good omen, maybe it’s this: Gerard, the first man to win three straight Cups with two different teams a century ago, went on to get his name etched on Lord Stanley a fourth time as a coach in 1926.

The team? The Montreal “Maroons.” True story.

“A three-peat would be a dream,” Maroon said. “I’d do anything to win again. I want to win as many as I can before this league kicks me out.”