It’s safe to say Brady Tkachuk has settled into his new surroundings in Florida.
After going pointless in his first five games with the Panthers before finally registering an assist, Tkachuk has scored natural hat tricks — three straight goals — in each of the past two games to lead to a pair of victories.
Tkachuk will try to make it three in a row when the Panthers play host to the Seattle Kraken on Saturday in Sunrise, Fla.
His latest trick came Thursday in a 3-2 victory against Vancouver, as he single-handedly rallied Florida from a two-goal deficit in regulation then scored the winner in overtime.
“It says a lot about just the guys in this room, just the culture that these guys have created over the last couple of years,” Tkachuk said. “You’re truly never out of it. For me to be able just to learn off that, I’m truly blessed and lucky.”
Tkachuk, acquired in a blockbuster offseason trade with Ottawa that paired him with older brother Matthew in the Sunshine State, became just the third player in NHL history to produce back-to-back natural hat tricks.
He also accomplished the feat Tuesday in a 7-3 victory at Columbus.
“He’s a true gamer …” Panthers defenseman Seth Jones, who has six assists over the past two games, said of Tkachuk. “He’s obviously scoring right now, but he impacts the game in so many ways with his physicality and his tenacity around the net.”
Panthers leading scorer Matthew Tkachuk added an assist to extend his point streak to seven games. The elder Tkachuk has 11 points through eight games (three goals, eight assists).
The Kraken are 3-0-1 on their five-game Eastern swing that concludes Saturday.
Seattle won at Detroit, Washington and Philadelphia, the latter in a shootout, before suffering a 4-3 overtime defeat Thursday at Tampa Bay as former Norris Trophy winning defenseman Victor Hedman weaved through the Kraken’s defense for the deciding goal.
The Kraken tied the score on Matty Beniers’ redirection of Vince Dunn’s shot from the point at 15:41 of the third period to force overtime. That came after Beniers won an offensive-zone faceoff.
“It’s a good point for us to get, certainly being down like that in the third period,” Kraken coach Lane Lambert said. “You start getting into game four and day eight or nine of a road trip and it starts to become fatiguing. I thought we had a little bit of fatigue.”
Jared McCann and Ryan Winterton also scored for the Kraken while goaltender Philipp Grubauer made 31 saves.
“I really liked our bench, our attitude and guys picking each other up,” Beniers said. “They scored that goal (midway through the third) and I don’t think any guy flinched. I think it was, ‘All right, let’s get back to work and we’ve got 10 minutes to tie this up.'”
McCann shares the team lead in scoring with eight points through eight games (three goals and five assists) and is tied for second with plus-4 rating, one behind defenseman Adam Larsson.
–Field Level Media
