A hat tossed onto the hockey rink after a hat trick was scored.
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Bruce Bennett/Getty Images North America
The males’s hockey match on the 2026 Milan Cortina Games is underway and lots of followers are hoping to see the thrilling feat of scoring three targets in a single sport, higher generally known as a hat trick.
“ I’m curious to see over in Italy for the Olympics, if we’ll see a hat trick to begin with, and then second will people throw their hats?” mentioned Ty Di Lello, a hockey historian primarily based in Winnipeg, Canada.
The worldwide sporting occasion will mark the return of National Hockey League gamers after a 12 year absence. It comes because the NHL set a brand new report for the most hat tricks in a single month this January.
Hat tricks have a wealthy history in the world of hockey, nevertheless it did not begin there. In truth, the phrase originated in cricket and unfold to many sports, together with soccer, darts and horse racing.
In this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week sequence, we hint hat trick’s some 150-year-history and why it is significantly particular on a hockey rink.
How ‘hat trick’ was coined in cricket
In cricket, a hat trick refers back to the dismissal of three batters by the identical baller with three successive balls. Rodney Ulyate, a spokesperson for the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, compares it to when a pitcher in baseball will get three consecutive strikeouts.
“I gather it’s a very common thing in baseball. I think you call it a no hit inning,” he mentioned. “But in cricket, trust me, it is vanishingly rare.”
A gentleman taking part in cricket, depicted in a drawing by John C. Anderson from 1860.
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Hulton Archive/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
Now, it stays unclear who coined hat trick, however its origin did certainly contain headwear.
In the nineteenth century, there have been stories in British newspapers of cricketers being given a hat after reaching what’s now generally known as a hat trick. Ulyate mentioned on the time, cricketers earned little or no for competing, so their pay was typically supplemented with materials prizes like bats, balls and watches.
By 1874, hat trick was the frequent time period for taking three wickets in three consecutive balls — beating out expressions “hat feat” and “bowling a gallon.” The latter stemmed from some cricketers being awarded a gallon of beer.
“ I must say that given the quantities of beer that cricketers are notorious for drinking … it’s surprising that ‘bowling a gallon’ didn’t take off,” Ulyate mentioned.
It’s additionally a thriller why “cap trick” did not catch on since cricket gamers generally wore caps, Ulyate added.
Over the years, cricketers have been gifted all types of headwear, from a straw hat to a inexperienced felt, feathered Tyrolean hat. While the phrase hat trick stays in cricket, hat prizes themselves started to vanish in the early 1900s, in the course of the interwar interval.
“It’s pretty hard to imagine today that any millionaire cricketer would be very impressed by the gift of a hat,” Ulyate mentioned.
An ice crew member cleans hats off the ice after a hat trick by David Pastrnak #88 of the Boston Bruins in the course of the third interval in opposition to the Seattle Kraken at Climate Pledge Arena on Feb. 26, 2024 in Seattle, Washington.
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Hat trick’s particular place in hockey
In hockey, a hat trick not solely refers to scoring three targets or extra in a single sport, nevertheless it’s typically adopted by spectators hurling their beanies, caps and different headwear onto the rink.
Like in cricket, the phrase hat trick in hockey additionally started with a free hat. But who precisely launched the time period? Well, that is up for debate between two hat outlets in Canada — Sammy Taft: World Famous Hatter retailer in Toronto and Henri Henri in Montreal. In each origin tales, the house owners started gifting hockey gamers a hat from their retailer as a advertising alternative.
Co-founder of Henri Henri, Jean-Maurice Lefebvre (R), shakes palms with Montreal Canadiens coach Elmer Lach (L) on the rink of the Montreal Forum, in 1947.
Henri Henri
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Henri Henri
“Once that connection between three goals and hats was established, fans basically took it over themselves,” mentioned Di Lello who has written about hat tricks.
“That probably started happening gradually in the late ’40s and ’50s as hockey crowds got bigger and traditions started forming,” he added.
Marie Lansiaux, assistant hatter at Henri Henri, mentioned on the time, spectators who flung their hats onto the ice would go retrieve their headwear at a counter after the sport.
That gave the proprietor of Henri Henri one other concept: hand out playing cards that may be tucked right into a hat’s sweatband. On one facet, the cardboard listed the schedule of the Montreal Canadiens video games, whereas the opposite facet learn “Like Hell it’s yours! Put it back and try another.”
“And you could write your name on the card and prove that it was your hat, so that way nobody could pinch your hat out of the boxes,” Lansiaux mentioned.
Nico Hischier #13 of the New Jersey Devils is congratulated by teammates on the bench after he scored a hat trick on Nov. 25, 2024 in Newark, New Jersey.
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Nowadays, the tossed hats are given to the participant who scored the hat trick, or they’re placed on a show in the lobby of the world, in accordance with Philip Pritchard, vice chairman and curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame.
“It’s a great unwritten rule in the game of hockey,” he mentioned.
Pritchard added that whereas different sports have deserted the free hat custom, the truth that hockey followers have stored it alive speaks to what he loves most concerning the sport: its reverence to custom.
“The hat trick is just another part of it and another story on why the human side of the game really shows in the game of ice hockey,” he mentioned.