Carter Verhaeghe Caps Panthers’ NHL Record Run of Natural Hat Tricks

Carter Verhaeghe’s three-goal performance against Seattle gave the Florida Panthers a place in NHL history: they became the first team to record a natural hat trick in three consecutive games. The feat came after Brady Tkachuk scored three straight goals against Columbus and Vancouver, with Verhaeghe continuing the run on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. It’s an extraordinary team sequence, and a milestone that also puts Verhaeghe’s own scoring history back in focus.

A natural hat trick means one player scores three consecutive goals in a game, with no opponent or teammate scoring between them. Florida’s achievement is about the timing as much as the goals themselves: three games in a row, with the streak carried by two players. Hockey reporter Elliotte Friedman highlighted the record after Verhaeghe’s performance, describing Florida as the first NHL team to put together three straight games with a natural hat trick.

Verhaeghe’s hat trick was the fifth of his career and his fourth with Florida. That distinction gives the night two layers: he helped complete a team record, while adding another entry to a personal résumé already marked by unusual scoring peaks. He didn’t become the first player to score natural hat tricks in three consecutive NHL games; the record belongs to Florida as a team, across the three-game sequence described by Friedman.

Verhaeghe’s place in Florida’s four-goal history

The three goals against Seattle also recall Verhaeghe’s most prolific night in a Panthers uniform. On April 1, 2023, he scored four times in Florida’s 7-0 win over Columbus. That performance made him one of only three Panthers to score four goals in a game, alongside Pavel Bure and Mark Parrish.

Parrish set the franchise mark first, scoring four in a 7-3 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Oct. 30, 1998. He played two seasons in Florida during a 12-year NHL career. Bure matched the four-goal feat on Jan. 1, 2000, scoring in a 7-5 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. He did it again on Feb. 20, 2001, in a 7-3 victory over the Atlanta Thrashers.

Verhaeghe’s 2023 outing ended a 22-year gap between four-goal games by Panthers players. The franchise record remains within reach of a very short list: just those three players have reached four goals in one game for Florida, and the team has yet to produce a five-goal performance by a single skater. A repeat would give Verhaeghe a second four-goal game as a Panther and put him alongside Bure as the only Florida players to do it twice.

A rare mark across the league

NHL.com statistics cited in the source put the number of players with at least one four-goal game at 325, including Verhaeghe, Bure and Parrish. Only 89 players have recorded more than one such game, according to the same account. That gap helps explain why a four-goal night stays with a player’s career: scoring four times in one game is a much narrower achievement than collecting a hat trick.

Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux share the league record, with 13 four-goal games apiece. Joe Malone was the first player to reach double digits, recording 12 between 1918 and 1924. Those totals offer a sense of the scale without changing what Verhaeghe’s latest hat trick means for Florida: his Seattle performance belongs to a team-record sequence, while the four-goal game remains a separate, still rarer club.

Here’s the next milestone to watch: whether Verhaeghe can score four in a game again and join Bure as the only Panther to do so twice. For now, his three goals against Seattle have already delivered something no NHL team had managed before, while adding to the case that Florida has had one of its most remarkable runs of individual scoring in recent memory.