Florida Panthers center Sam Reinhart of West Vancouver, British Columbia, scored his seventh career National Hockey League hat trick on Saturday. He achieved this with an 8-4 victory for the Panthers over the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado.
Reinhart gave the Panthers a 2-0 lead after 3:02 minutes of the first period through Gustav Forsling and Aleksander Barkov. He then gave the Panthers a 3-0 lead through Evan Rodrigues of Toronto, Ont., and Barkov at 7:41 of the first period, giving the Panthers a 3-0 lead. Reinhart’s hat trick came at 5:59 of the third period thanks to Matthew Tkachuk and Barkov. This was the game-winning power play goal and gave the Panthers a 5-4 lead.
During the game, Reinhart was one of two Panthers to score in the contest. The other was center Carter Verhaeghe of Toronto, Ontario, who scored two goals. Reinhart, Verhaeghe and Rodrigues all had multi-point games. Verhaeghe added an assist for three points and Rodrigues had two assists.
In the 2023-24 season, Reinhart scored 28 goals and 22 assists for 50 points in 39 games. He is a +17 with 17 penalty minutes, 17 power play points, two shorthanded points, seven game-winning goals, 101 shots on goal, 125 face-off wins, 39 blocked shots, 20 hits, 17 takeaways and 11 giveaways. Reinhart leads the NHL with 13 power play goals and seven game-winning goals. Reinhart’s inferior points (both goals) came through Panthers victories. The first was a 3-1 Panthers victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs on October 19th and the second was a 3-2 Panthers victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on December 27th.
With the win, the Panthers improved to 25 wins, 12 regulation losses and two overtime losses for 52 points. They are in second place in the Atlantic Division, two points behind the Boston Bruins.
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