Enough With the ‘Gordie Howe Hat Trick’

It happened again. A player achieved that special unofficial hockey stat that makes people have the same conversation for the first time since the previous time someone did it.

Boston’s Milan Lucic had a Gordie Howe hat trick last Tuesday (Oct. 19), which hadn’t been accomplished since… Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk accomplished the feat 11 days earlier on Oct. 8.

A goal, an assist, and a fight. The Gordie Howe hat trick.

That’s when the announcers say things like, “You know what? I don’t think Gordie Howe ever had a Gordie Howe hat trick.” “No, he definitely did it at least once.”

Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin of Comcast Sportsnet in Washington said something along those lines in Thursday’s Caps-Bruins game while discussing Lucic’s ‘accomplishment.’ I was pulling my hair out as I listened to this, because according to every source I’ve read, Gordie Howe did it twice. He wasn’t the first to do it – that honor goes to Harry Cameron in 1917 – he didn’t do it the most, yet this unofficial stat is named after him. What’s worse is that each time someone does it, it leads to the same discussion about Howe.

NHL.com says that Brendan Shanahan has the most of these, with 17. Trailing him is Rick Tocchet. At no point should this have even been called the Gordie Howe hat trick.

This past year, the Lester B. Pearson Award was renamed the Ted Lindsay Award. Being an unofficial stat, the name ‘Gordie Howe hat trick’ can’t officially be renamed like the Lindsay Award. So I ask all announcers, pundits, columnists, bloggers and fans to start calling it the Brendan Shanahan hat trick. Shanahan had 17 of these in 1524 career regular season NHL games. Howe only had two in 1767 career games. Let’s also keep in mind that since records weren’t kept on this, Shanahan is only assumed to be the all-time leader in this category.

Do the right thing. Rename this stat the Brendan Shanahan hat trick.

Ben Sumner writes for Capitals Outsider and Gunaxin.com. Follow him on Twitter @benjaminsumner.