What Is a Hat Trick in Hockey?

The hats come down in a blizzard. One player, three goals, and a few thousand fans empty their heads onto the ice. That is a hat trick in hockey, three goals by one skater in a single game, and the strangest part is that hockey did not invent the name. It borrowed it from a cricket pitch in 1858.

So the short answer is simple: three goals, one player, one game. The longer answer, the part nobody tells you, runs through a Sheffield cricket ground, a Toronto hat shop, and a 21-second burst that has stood as a record since Harry Truman was president. Here is the whole story of the most celebrated three goals in sports.

One man owned the volume, another owned the speed, and the tradition that links them traces to a single fedora. Call it The Fedora Rule, the quirk where a hat reward, not a rulebook, gave the feat its name.

What Is a Hat Trick in Hockey?

A hat trick is three goals scored by one player in a single game, and that is the entire requirement. The goals can come in any period, in any order, on the power play or shorthanded, and they still add up to a hat trick. The NHL files the feat under "most three-or-more-goal games," so four, five, or six goals count too.

Two rules trip people up. Overtime goals count, because overtime is live hockey. Shootout goals do not, because in a shootout no individual is credited with a goal at all; the winning team gets exactly one goal added to the final score, and the rest is logged in a separate column. And the three goals must come in the same game. You cannot stack two on Tuesday and one on Thursday. If the rule feels strict, it is the same spirit as how the NHL treats overtime and shootout results across the board.

If you are still building out the rulebook, the hat trick sits next to the basics: icing, offside, and what numbers like plus-minus and penalty minutes actually measure on a scoresheet.

The Fedora Rule: Where the Name Comes From

Here is the part that surprises every fan who looks it up. The term is older than the NHL, older than the forward pass, and it has nothing to do with hockey. In September 1858, on a cricket ground in Sheffield, England, a bowler named H.H. Stephenson took three wickets on three consecutive deliveries. The crowd passed a collection plate, bought him a hat, and handed it over to mark the feat. Three in a row, one hat. The phrase stuck.

"A collection was taken up and used to buy a hat that was presented to Stephenson in recognition of his accomplishment." — NHL.com

Hockey borrowed the word slowly. Newspapers used "hat trick" for a three-goal game as far back as the 1930s, but the tradition fans actually see was lit by a Toronto businessman. Sammy Taft ran a hat shop, and to drum up business he promised a free hat to any player who scored three goals in a game at Maple Leaf Gardens. On January 26, 1946, Chicago's Alex Kaleta took him up on it and scored four, one better than the deal required, to win his fedora. The hat reward, not any rulebook, is why we call it a hat trick at all.

"There was no rhyme or reason to it. I just, for some reason, said, 'You go out there and score three goals tonight and I'll give you the hat.' Sure enough, he went out there and knocked in three goals." — Sammy Taft, NHL.com

Fans throwing their own hats came later, around the 1950s, once hats were everyday wear and crowds got big enough that a few thousand felt brave. By then arena crews simply expected the cleanup. The cricket prize had become a hockey ritual.

The Three Types of Hat Trick

Not every hat trick is built the same, and the league quietly tracks the variations. One of them is named after a man who barely managed it himself.

That last one is the great hockey joke. The Gordie Howe hat trick, goal plus assist plus fight, carries his name because he embodied the all-around menace it describes. Yet across five decades and more than 2,000 pro games, Howe is credited with just two of them, both against Toronto in the early 1950s. The popular theory: once he flattened a few enforcers, opponents stopped dropping the gloves with him, so the fights dried up. A postseason hat trick is the fourth flavor fans prize most, because the stage multiplies everything.

The Hat-Trick Records Every Fan Should Know

The leaderboard belongs to one era and one name, with a few oddities that will never be touched.

Gretzky's 50 is the kind of number that distorts the whole chart, sitting a full 10 clear of Lemieux and miles past modern stars; Alex Ovechkin, the greatest goal-scorer of his generation, has 34. Mosienko's 21 seconds is even harder to fathom, three goals against the Rangers in less time than a single shift, and it has survived more than 70 years. The most recent jaw-dropper came on the biggest stage: Mitch Marner scored the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Final history for Vegas in 2026.

"I got put in good areas by my teammates and I was happy enough to finish them off." — Mitch Marner, NHL.com

What Happens to All Those Hats?

After the storm, somebody has to clean it up. Arena crews sweep and count every hat, and what comes next is up to each team, because the league has no single policy. Most clubs donate them. When a star like Leon Draisaitl triggered a downpour of more than a thousand hats in Edmonton, the Oilers kept a few as keepsakes and sent the rest to local shelters. The Minnesota Wild run the warmest version of all: they count the thrown hats, buy that many brand-new ones, and have the scorer hand-deliver them to children's hospitals. Fans who want their own hat back usually have about half an hour to claim it.

Sources and Reporting

• NHL.com: origin history, Sammy Taft and Alex Kaleta, natural hat trick
• ESPN: career hat-trick leaders, Gretzky's 50
• NHL Records: career and season hat-trick records
• Hockey-Reference: hat-trick career leaders cross-reference
• NHL.com: Joe Malone seven-goal game record

The Verdict: The Fedora Rule Endures

Three goals, a borrowed cricket word, and a free hat from a Toronto shopkeeper, that is the unlikely recipe behind the loudest celebration in hockey. That tradition has outlived its inventor, its original hats, and every player who first earned one, and it still turns an ordinary Tuesday into a blizzard of headwear the moment a third puck crosses the line. The next time the hats rain down, you will know exactly why, and who to thank. So whose three goals will bring the hats down next?