Other Variations
A player accomplishes a Gordie Howe hat trick by scoring a goal, getting an assist, and getting in a fight, all in the same game (Howe himself only recorded two in his career). While this description has remained popular, it does not satisfy the conditions of a traditional hat trick.
In December 1995, Florida Panthers captain Scott Mellanby scored a rat trick, the term coined by teammate John Vanbiesbrouck. Prior to the game, Mellanby killed an unwanted rat in the Panthers' locker room with his hockey stick, and proceeded to score a pair of goals later that night. When Mellanby scored a hat trick in a later game, some Florida fans threw plastic rats on the ice, a tradition that continued for all Panthers' goals throughout the 1996 playoffs. Due to the resulting game delays caused by the necessary cleanup of the plastic rats, the league eventually banned the activity and modified Rule 63 to impose a minor penalty against the home team for a violation.
Scoring five goals in a single game is an incredibly rare accomplishment. Some call this feat "The Mario" (in honor of Hall of Fame member Mario Lemieux) in reference to the even rarer achievement in which a player scores a goal in every possible way (regulation play, power-play, short-handed, penalty shot and empty net) during the same game. To date, Mario Lemieux is the only NHL player to accomplish this feat.
Read more about this topic: Hat-trick, Hockey, Variations
Famous quotes containing the word variations:
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)