Logan Cooley Makes NHL History With Rare Achievement Over Alex Ovechkin

Cooley beats Ovechkin’s mark with fifth career NHL hat trick© X(formerly Twitter)/@NHL

Logan Cooley just did something very few players ever manage this early in their careers. The Utah Mammoth centre scored a hat trick against the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night, the fifth of his young NHL career. That alone would be a decent story. But what made it genuinely remarkable is who he leapfrogged to get there. At 228 career games, Cooley became the fastest active player to reach five career hat tricks, edging Alex Ovechkin by two games. The 22-year-old from Pittsburgh is writing his name into the record books, and he's doing it at a pace that's hard to ignore.

Cooley's Fifth Hat Trick Surpasses Ovechkin's Benchmark

Cooley opened the scoring on Utah's first shot at 1:42 of the first period, beating Engstrom to the outside before cruising through the crease and tucking a backhand around Canadiens goaltender Jakub Dobes. He kept building from there. He completed the hat trick 11:05 into the second period with another power-play goal following a series of Canadiens penalties. Cooley factored on four points, registering his third career four-point night, and now has an impressive 10 goals through 11 road games this season.

It was his second hat trick in just four games, following a three-goal performance in an overtime win against the Pittsburgh Penguins the previous Thursday. That back-to-back hat trick run inside a week is the kind of hot stretch that tends to get people talking league-wide. Cooley now has 11 goals on the 2026-27 season, tying Toronto Maple Leafs captain Auston Matthews for fifth in the NHL. For a player who only turned 22 in May, the numbers are genuinely striking.

Ovechkin reached five career hat tricks in 230 games. Cooley got there in 228. Two games faster than the greatest goal-scorer in NHL history is not a rounding error.

What This Means Beyond the Stat Line

Utah went 3-for-4 on the power play Thursday night, with two of Cooley's goals coming on the man-advantage, marking the first time he scored multiple power-play goals in a single game. That's a new dimension to his game showing up at the right moment in the season.

Despite the individual brilliance, the Mammoth fell 5-4 in overtime after Cole Caufield scored 30 seconds into the extra period to win it for Montreal. Utah dropped to 10-6-1 on the season, so the record came wrapped inside a loss. That's the complicated part of individual milestones in team sports. Cooley delivered everything he had. His team came up short by one.

Cooley moved into second in team scoring with 21 points in 17 games, one point behind Clayton Keller for the team lead. He's carrying a heavy load on a Mammoth roster that has clear playoff ambitions this season, and right now, he looks like the player capable of shouldering it.