Nikita Kucherov scored a natural hat trick in the third period and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Buffalo Sabres 8-3 on Wednesday night, November 11, in Buffalo. Kucherov scored at 1:25, 4:11 and 14:13 of the third period, all after Buffalo had cut a four goal Tampa Bay lead down to 4-3, and he finished the night with four points in the highest scoring game of the season for the Lightning.
John Carlson reached 800 career points on the same night, recording a goal and four assists for the first five point game of his career. Tampa Bay improved to 12-4-2 with the win, while Buffalo fell to 8-7-3 and lost for the third time in four games.
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Buffalo Cut It To One, Then Kucherov Took Over
The game turned in the opening minute of the third period. Tage Thompson scored 33 seconds into the period to make it 4-3, completing a Buffalo push from goals by Josh Doan on the power play and Jason Zucker late in the second. A four goal lead built by Scott Sabourin, Carlson, Brandon Hagel and Yanni Gourde was suddenly a one goal game, and the home crowd had reason to believe a comeback was on.
Kucherov answered less than a minute later. He beat Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen on a backhand move to restore a two goal lead at 5-3, a goal that ended the night for the Buffalo goaltender. He scored again at 4:11, one timing a pass from Carlson from the right circle to make it 6-3. He completed the natural hat trick at 14:13 on the power play, again from the right circle and again off a Carlson feed, to make it 7-3. The sequence is detailed in the NHL game recap, which records all three goals in the third period with no other scorer in between.
A natural hat trick means three straight goals by one player, and this was the third natural hat trick of Kucherov’s career, the most in Lightning franchise history. It was his eighth hat trick overall, tying Martin St. Louis for second most in team history, marks noted in the Lightning Backcheck report on NHL.com. Kucherov then added an assist, dropping a pass for Hagel to score the final goal at 15:06 and close an 8-3 scoreline built on only 22 Tampa Bay shots.
Carlson Reaches 800 Points With A Career Night
Carlson did not play a supporting role in this win. He scored a power play goal in the first period, 49 seconds after Sabourin opened the scoring, and he kept adding points through the night: an assist on Hagel’s second period goal, and assists on all three Kucherov goals in different forms, including the feeds from the point and the right side that Kucherov finished.
His fifth point of the night was his 800th career point, making him just the fifth United States born defenseman to reach that mark, according to the Lightning report on NHL.com. He is also the fourth defenseman in Lightning history to record a five point game, joining Darren Raddysh, Pavel Kubina and Doug Crossman.
You never take anything for granted. I think those accolades and all that will be cooler one day in my life, but certainly at the same time it’s a hard league, so you never take that for granted.
Carlson said that about reaching 800 points, in comments published by the Lightning. Jake Guentzel finished with four assists, a career high for him, Anthony Cirelli added three assists on the night he played his 600th NHL game, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 28 saves for Tampa Bay.
A Debut, A Return, And A Cost
The night carried smaller firsts inside the big scoreline. Sam O’Reilly, playing his first NHL game, recorded his first career point with an assist on Gourde’s goal, becoming the 22nd player in franchise history to record a point in his debut. Gourde scored in his second game back from offseason hip surgery. Those details matter for a team that keeps winning while integrating new and returning players into important minutes.
There was a cost. Defenseman Erik Cernak left the game in the second period and did not return, and head coach Jon Cooper said after the game that Cernak would probably miss Thursday’s game in Columbus. Tampa Bay closes a back to back on Thursday night against the Columbus Blue Jackets, a quick turnaround after an eight goal night. Buffalo also plays Thursday, visiting Chicago, after a game that showed both its fight in cutting a 4-0 deficit to one goal and its problem in the third period, when Kucherov and Carlson combined on three straight goals and turned a close finish into a rout.
