It was a memorable Saturday night for two Americans on the Toronto Maple Leafs. In an exciting 6-5 Toronto win over the Ottawa Senators, Auston Matthews of San Ramon, CA recorded his third career National Hockey League hat trick, and Jack Campbell of Port Huron, MI broke the NHL record for most consecutive wins by a goaltender to start the season.
Let us start with Matthews because on this night it was the three-time NHL All-Star who was prolific. He had three goals and one assist for four points. Matthews scored the first two goals of the game at 8:52 and then 9:31 of the first period. He beat Anton Forsberg twice on goals from Mitch Marner of Markham, Ontario. Morgan Rielly of Vancouver, British Columbia picked up a secondary assist on the second Matthews goal. Marner then picked up his hat trick with 44 seconds left in the second period from Marner and Alex Galchenyuk of Milwaukee, WI, which put the Maple Leafs up 4-3 at the time.
Five Maple Leafs had multi-point games in the win, Marner had one goal and three assists for four points. Zach Hyman of Toronto, Ontario, and Ilya Mikheyev of Omsk, Russia had one goal and one assist for two points each, while Galchenyuk had two assists.
It may come as a surprise that this was only Matthews’ third career hat trick when he currently leads the NHL with 31 goals. His first was memorable because it came in a four-goal game in his first NHL game of his career–a 5-4 Toronto loss to Ottawa on October 12, 2016. Matthews’ second career hat trick was in a 7-4 Toronto win over the New Jersey Devils on January 14, 2020.
Campbell meanwhile struggled in between the Maple Leafs pipes on Saturday in giving up five goals. However, on this night it was good enough to win. In the process, he won his 11th consecutive game to start the season, which broke the record previously set by Carey Price of the Montreal Canadiens, who had 10 consecutive wins to start the 2016-17 season.
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