Logan Cooley beats Ovechkin's pace to 5 hat tricks

It was Cooley's 2nd hat trick in 4 games. The Mammoth still lost, because Cole Caufield needed only 30 seconds of overtime.

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Mammoth’s Cooley becomes fastest active player to five career hat tricks t.co/DVPoLpu0pg

Here's the scoreboard part first. Montreal won 5-4 in OT. Cooley had his 3 goals plus an assist, and Nick Schmaltz added a goal and 2 helpers. Montreal answered with goals from Nick Suzuki, Kirby Dach, Arber Xhekaj and Adam Engstrom, whose goal was the first of his career, and then Caufield ended it. Utah dropped to 10-6-1, and the Habs moved to 10-3-3.

The other Utah story was in net. Sebastian Cossa made 30 saves on a night Montreal outshot Utah badly, and Jakub Dobes needed only 16 at the other end. People watching it live saw that before the game was over.

Now the number. Cooley got to 5 hat tricks in 228 career games. Ovechkin, who has more goals than anyone in NHL history, needed 230 to get to 5. Cooley is 22, and nobody active in the league got there faster. His last one was a week earlier in an overtime win over Pittsburgh. He's playing like a guy who knows it, too: "Confidence is a big thing in this league, and when you have it and you're feeling good, I think that's when you're at your best," Cooley said after the game.

It happening against Montreal makes it sting a little more. The Canadiens took Juraj Slafkovsky 1st overall in 2022, and Cooley went 3rd that year to Arizona, the franchise that became Utah. So far this season Cooley has 21 points in 17 games, and Slafkovsky has 12 in 16. He had an assist on Thursday while the guy taken 2 spots after him scored 3 times in front of him. Naturally, the redraft question came out right after the final horn.

Montreal isn't losing that trade-off by much. The same draft gave the Habs Lane Hutson at 62nd overall, and he has turned into a franchise defenseman, so the 2022 haul looks fine either way. But Slafkovsky was supposed to be the forward of that class, and right now the answer to the question in that tweet is getting louder in Utah. The Mammoth play next in Ottawa on Saturday, and Montreal goes to Toronto. Cooley has 2 hat tricks in his last 4 games, so it's not crazy to wonder if a 3rd is coming.