David Pastrnak Now Up To Nine Hat Tricks, Good For Fourth On Bruins' All-Time List

By Matthew Geagan, CBS Boston

BOSTON (CBS) -- After missing the first seven games of the season, David Pastrnak is making up for lost time when it comes to putting the puck in the back of the net. The Bruins' prolific scorer tallied a hat trick to help Boston come back from a 3-1 third period deficit against the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night, giving him five goals in just three games this season.

For good measure, Pasta also assisted on Patrice Bergeron's game-winner in overtime, a nice side dish for his three meatballs.

Wednesday night was Pastrnak's ninth career hat trick during the regular season, and 10th overall when you include postseason play. He's now fourth all-time on Boston's hat trick list, trailing only Phil Esposito (26), Cam Neely (14) and Johnny Bucyk (12). Not bad for the 24-year-old Pastrnak, who needed just 393 regular season games to notch his nine hat tricks. Espo needed 625, Neely 525 and Buyck 1,436 games to secure their spots on Boston's all-time list.

Pastrnak has 10 of Boston's last 12 hat tricks, which is just silly.

Pastrnak started his scoring binge early Wednesday night, lighting the lamp just 12 seconds into the contest after Boston won the opening faceoff. He took a feed from Charlie McAvoy and showed off some serious skills, making Philadelphia defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere question his existence with some filthy puck handling before beating netminder Carter Hart.

That's just unfair. It looked like that beauty would go to waste as the Flyers potted three unanswered goals over the next 48 minutes of action, but Pastrnak had other plans.

His second goal came with the Bruins on the power play, the culmination of some beautiful passing by Boston. Brad Marchand sent it to Nick Ritchie, who hit Patrice Bergeron in front of the net, with Bergy finding Pastrnak for a pinball finish.

It was lovely, but there was still work to be done. Pasta took care of business with just 15 seconds left in regulation, cleaning up a mess in front of the Philly net from the right side for the game-tying goal.

With his four-point performance on Wednesday, Pastrnak is up to seven points in his three games this season. While there were no hats thrown on the ice, considering there was no one to throw hats on the ice in the stands, Pasta celebrated with a sweet hat of his own during his postgame Zoom with reporters.

"Every night can be a different guy. Today was me," he said after Wednesday's win. "It's fun, especially coming back from injury, to get these games under my belt and get a couple of goals on the board. A couple of great plays on the power play by Bergy and the second one was Marchy. I got a lot of help, and those are always fun.

"Overall, I think it was a character win," he said of Boston's second straight comeback win. "We played well and I think we deserved the two points today."

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