{"id":914946,"date":"2026-09-30T05:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T05:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/914946\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T05:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T05:22:08","slug":"oilers-bouchard-pots-first-hat-trick-by-a-defenceman-in-season-opener-since-1980","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/914946\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers&#8217; Bouchard pots first hat trick by a defenceman in season opener since 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/hockey\/nhl\/players\/evan-bouchard\/8c6b552e-28f4-47c1-8595-ff2b00e9cba7\" class=\"sn-player-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-player=\"8c6b552e-28f4-47c1-8595-ff2b00e9cba7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Evan Bouchard<\/a> didn&#8217;t waste any time showcasing his offensive talent.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/hockey\/nhl\/teams\/edmonton-oilers\/\" class=\"sn-team-post-link\" target=\"_self\" data-team=\"edmonton-oilers\" data-league=\"nhl\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Edmonton Oilers<\/a> defenceman notched a hat trick in Tuesday&#8217;s season opener against the visiting Vancouver Canucks.<\/p>\n<p>It marked the first hat trick for any NHL defenceman in a season opener since Mark Howe accomplished the feat with the Hartford Whalers way back in 1980.<\/p>\n<p>Bouchard capped the hat trick midway through the third period, cutting Vancouver&#8217;s lead to 5-4 and causing a short break as arena staff picked up all the hats thrown by fans.<\/p>\n<p>Bouchard then notched his second assist of the night on Vasily Podkolzin&#8217;s tying goal with 43 seconds left.<\/p>\n<p>That made Bouchard the first defenceman in NHL history to record five points in a season opener.<\/p>\n<p>The native of Oakville, Ont., is coming off a career-best season in offensive numbers (21 goals, 74 assists for 95 points in 82 games).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evan Bouchard didn&#8217;t waste any time showcasing his offensive talent. The Edmonton Oilers defenceman notched a hat trick&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-914946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}