How many NHL players have (like Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon on 20th February 2015) have had only three shots in a game and scored a hat trick?
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1This would be interesting to know, but I'm not sure a stat like this is even recorded.– New-To-ITFeb 23 '15 at 14:23
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2Of course it's recorded. Every game's box score records it :) If I have time I'll download the information needed to figure this out, but anyone can do so from freely available stats (given some time).– Joe ♦Feb 23 '15 at 18:28
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Hockey Reference was able to at least partially answer this; I only searched on goals=3 and goals=4 (so a 5+ goal game wouldn't show up).
However, it seems to be a very common occurrence. For example, it happened 7 times so far this season; Shawn Matthias (of Vancouver) scored 3 goals on 3 shots on 2/13 versus Boston.
According to my Hockey-Reference search, it occurred 233 times since 1987 (when their database begins keeping track). It also showed 10 4 goal-4 shot games. I didn't look beyond that.
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I'm glad to see that no one matched 3 goals on 2 shots... though wonder if that's impossible or not (not familiar with the intricacies of scoring in the NHL) May 23 '17 at 9:59
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2It actually is possible! If a team scores an own-goal, the goal gets credited to the last player on the other team who played the puck; however, that player is not credited with a shot on goal. Here's a list of players who scored a goal in a game where they had 0 shots: hkref.com/tiny/awYmJ– PawrApr 16 '18 at 17:41