Canadian Olympic gold medalist Natalie Spooner of Scarborough, Ontario registered her first career Professional Women’s Hockey League hat trick on Wednesday. She accomplished the fear in a 5-3 win over Boston at the Tsongas Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Spooner, who won the gold medal for Canada at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi and the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, put Toronto up 2-0 from Canadian Olympic gold medalists Lauriane Rougeau of Pointe-Claire, Quebec and Kristen Campbell of Brandon, Manitoba. Spooner then put Toronto up 3-0 with two minutes and 53 seconds left in the second period from Canadian Olympic gold medalist Sarah Nurse of Hamilton, Ontario, and then registered her hat trick with two minutes and 28 seconds left in the third period from Canadian Olympic gold medalist Emma Maltais of Burlington, Ontario and Jesse Compher. At the time, Toronto went up 5-2. The gold medal for Rougeau came at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. The gold medals for Campbell, Nurse and Maltais came at the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing.
The other two Toronto players with a goal were Kali Flanagan and Nurse. Spooner was one of three Canadians with a multi-point game. The others were Maltais with three assists for three points, and Nurse with one goal and one assist for two points.
In registering the hat trick, Spooner had seven shots on goal. In 10 games this season, Spooner had 10 goals and one assist for 11 points. She was a +1 with three faceoff wins, three power-play goals and one game-winning goal. The game-winning goal came in a 2-0 Toronto win over New York on January 26. With the win, Toronto is in third place in the PWHL with 14 points.
