Panthers set NHL record with hat tricks in third straight game, rout Kraken 8-3

Carter Verhaeghe scored a natural hat trick and Sam Bennett found the net in all three periods as the Florida Panthers routed the Seattle Kraken 8-3 on Saturday night, making Florida the first team in NHL history to produce a hat trick in three consecutive games.

The final box score showed Verhaeghe and Bennett each with three goals, Niko Mikkola and Sam Reinhart adding one apiece, and Matthew Tkachuk collecting three assists in front of 19,169 fans at Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise. The win extended a run that began two games earlier, when Brady Tkachuk posted natural hat tricks of his own against Columbus and Vancouver, and it moved Florida to 5-2-2 on the young season while Seattle dropped to 5-3-1.

The numbers

Bennett opened the scoring just 1:05 into the game, his first goal of the season. Verhaeghe answered with two goals 1:11 apart late in the first period, then added a third with 13:58 left in the second to push Florida's lead to 4-1. Bennett closed out his own hat trick with goals in the second and third periods, giving him three goals in a single game for the first time this season. Freddy Gaudreau, Shane Wright and Ryker Evans scored for Seattle, and Kaapo Kakko and Berkly Catton each had two assists.

Florida outshot Seattle 37-23. Panthers goaltender Jacob Markstrom made 20 saves to pick up the win, while Kraken starter Joey Daccord allowed eight goals on 37 shots. The postgame highlights capped a stretch in which Florida has produced four hat tricks this season, already matching the team's combined total over the previous three regular seasons. The Panthers are also only the third team in 30 years to record a hat trick of any kind in three straight games, a run that started Tuesday in a 7-3 win at Columbus, continued Thursday in a 3-2 win over Vancouver, and culminated Saturday against Seattle.

How Florida built this roster

The hat-trick streak is unfolding on a roster still built around the core that won back-to-back Stanley Cups over the Edmonton Oilers in 2024 and 2025. Verhaeghe, who also won a title with Tampa Bay in 2020, now has three championships and ranks among active players for career playoff game-winning goals. Bennett was named the 2025 Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoff MVP after leading that postseason with 15 goals, and the Panthers signed him to an eight-year, $64 million extension that June, keeping him in Florida through 2033.

Saturday's game also marked the first time Mackie Samoskevich played in Sunrise since he was traded away in June. Samoskevich spent three seasons with Florida, scoring 27 goals in 156 games and winning two Stanley Cups with the franchise, before the Panthers sent him to Seattle for draft picks on the same day they acquired Brady Tkachuk from the Ottawa Senators. One of the picks Florida received from Seattle for Samoskevich was later included in the package sent to Ottawa for Tkachuk. Samoskevich entered Saturday with three goals and an assist through Seattle's first seven games.

A trade built around two brothers

Tkachuk's arrival in Florida, finalized June 21 in a deal that sent Ottawa two first-round picks, a second-rounder and a conditional first-round pick, was built in part to pair the two Tkachuk brothers on the same roster for the first time in their NHL careers. That storyline has quickly become part of the team's early identity: his natural hat trick against Columbus on Tuesday, with all three goals coming inside an 8:03 span of the second period and each one assisted by his brother Matthew, was reported as the first natural hat trick in NHL history in which every goal was set up by a sibling.

"Style of play, obviously, the relationship with his brother, who he is as a person. … It's just a real positive fit," Panthers general manager Bill Zito said of acquiring Brady Tkachuk.

Florida had been retooling after a season disrupted by injuries, and Ottawa general manager Steve Staios has said the trade followed a request from Tkachuk, who held a no-movement clause and gave the Senators a short list of teams he would accept a deal to. The move left Ottawa with added salary-cap space and draft capital, Staios said, while Florida absorbed another year-plus of Tkachuk's $8.2 million contract on top of an already expensive core.

What happens next

Seattle will try to regroup Tuesday when it hosts Detroit, a quick turnaround for a team that has now lost two of its last three games. Florida's next test comes Wednesday in Ottawa, where Brady Tkachuk will face his former team for the first time since the trade, in the city where he spent parts of eight seasons as the Senators' captain.

Whether the Panthers can stretch their hat-trick streak to four straight games is a smaller question than whether the team, already a two-time defending Stanley Cup champion, can sustain the kind of secondary scoring that has carried its first nine games. Verhaeghe, Bennett and the Tkachuk brothers have combined for a disproportionate share of Florida's offense so far, and the schedule ahead, beginning with the trip to Ottawa, will test how that balance holds once opponents start game-planning specifically around it.

• Oct. 13 at Columbus: Panthers 7, Blue Jackets 3 — Brady Tkachuk natural hat trick
• Oct. 15 vs. Vancouver: Panthers 3, Canucks 2 — Brady Tkachuk hat trick
• Oct. 17 vs. Seattle: Panthers 8, Kraken 3 — Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Bennett hat tricks