Dec 12, 2024; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen (55) sprays center Scott Laughton (21) after he scored a hat-trick goal against the Detroit Red Wings in the third period at Wells Fargo Center. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Ross-Imagn Images
Scott Laughton scored all four goals in the Flyers 4-1 win over Detroit on Thursday night.
Guaranteed you didn't have that on your bingo card.
The thing is, scoring four goals in a game is tough, even for the best players in the sport. Still, a guy has scored at least four goals in a game 496 times in the history of the NHL, including Laughton.
But for a bottom six forward to do it, it's even more rare. For a fourth line winger - the role Laughton had on Thursday, it's as frequent as Haley's comet.
And yet, it happened. On Wells Fargo ice. In the year of our Lord 2024.
SCOTT LAUGHTON JUST UNLEASHED A BREAKAWAY CLAPPER 💥 pic.twitter.com/NrE6lb3XR8
And I'm here to tell you it was the most improbable four-goal game in the history of the game.
Wait a second, Ant. You mean more improbable than Jiri Dopita scoring four goals in a game for the Flyers in 2002?
Good point. That was incredibly improbable. But it happened in a game where the Flyers scored seven goals. So, while it was the Jiri Dopita game, it wasn't as improbable as the Scott Laughton game, because Laughton scored all of his team's goals in the game. This is why I disqualify some other crazy four-goal games - like when Jan Bulis scored four against the Flyers in 2006, and Rocco Grimaldi scored four of his 30 career goals in one game for the Nashville Predators is 2021. Wait, Pascal Rheaume had a four-goal game? GTFO. Well... uh... same for him as Grimaldi, Bulis and Dopita!
And don't forget Tom Bladon scoring four goals AND having four assist s for an eight-point game... by a Flyers defenseman!
Look, I spent an inordinate amount of time going through each of those 495 instances of at least four goals scored by one player in an NHL game, so let me try to make my argument, O.K? I found that only 14 times did the guy who did it score every goal in the game for their team.
Ha! That's unique!
Only one of those 14 was more than four goals - but that was by Sergei Fedorov, who was on another plane as an offensive player, scoring all five goals in a 5-4 win over Washington in December 1996.
#OTD in 1996...
Sergei Fedorov became the first player in NHL history to score all five goals in his team's 5-4 OT win over the Capitals. 🙌 pic.twitter.com/49eRGYCxY1
And while that was incredibly impressive, guys like Fedorov were expected to do amazing things on the ice. That's why he was a superstar. Hell, he's the only guy on this list of 14 twice!
The other 13 were all four-goal games. Laughton's was just the 10th in the modern era of the NHL (post 1967-expansion).
Here are the 13 guys who did it:
So, Laughton is the first guy to do it in more than 20 years. And when you look at that list, it is full of certified offensive dynamos.
Going backwards before Laughton:
Sedin is a Hall of Famer who scored 393 goals and had 1041 points in 17 seasons. I couldn't find video of his four-goal game at Detroit, but I have never seen a more incredible ending to a career that what he and his brother Henrik had in their final game back in 2018:
1 year ago today, the Hockey Gods took over the Sedin twins’ final home game.
Shots on goal were 22-33, Daniel scores his 22nd goal 33 seconds into the 2nd, assisted by Henrik.
And to cap it off they scored the winner 2:33 into overtime pic.twitter.com/Eqt3k3pkdN
Naslund is one of those guys who you kind of forget about, but he was a stud in Vancouver as well, scoring more than 30 goals in a season six times and was a Hart Trophy runner up in 2002-03 finishing second to fellow Swede Peter Forsberg.
Between 2000 and 2004 no one scored more goals or had more points than Markus Näslund.
Happy 48th to a legend. pic.twitter.com/A9in5sqlq2
Iginla is another Hall of Famer who scored 625 goals in his career, which ranks tied for 16th all-time in the league. He also had 1300 career points, so it's not a surprise to know that he had a night for the Flames where he just took over a game and earned the two points by himself back in 2003.
96 seconds of vintage Jarome Iginla known as "The Shift" in Game 5 of the 2004 Stanley Cup Final. 👏 pic.twitter.com/fm35QHoij2
Perrault is the first guy you get to on this list that makes you go, "Hmmm" about having a game where he scored all four of his team's goals, but he was also a solid offensive player. Mostly a middle six center in his career and likely most well-known for his time in Montreal, Perrault did average 24 goals and 49 points per 82 games played in the NHL, so he wasn't an offensive slouch.
Tkachuk scored 538 goals and had 1065 points in his illustrious career and is another guy who you see did this and go, "Oh, that makes sense." He's also one of three guys on this list who did it for teams no longer in existence in the NHL, which I thought was a neat nugget.
We talked about Fedorov above, but his first four-goal game where he was the only player to score for his team came in 1995 against the Los Angeles Kings. The interesting thing about that game is it ended in a tie. It was the second such occurrence in a game where the player scored the only four goals for his team. The other was Maruk, who scored all four goals in a tie for the lowly Cleveland Barons against St. Louis. What separates Maruk from Laughton is he had a 50-goal season and a 60-goal season when he was with Washington in the early 1980s. And in doing the research, imagine my surprise that Maruk had a 60-76-136 season for the Caps in 1981-82 and finished sixth in the Hart Trophy voting. Of course, that was the year Wayne Gretzky posted a record 212-point season, so, Maruk was never going to win it. But sixth?
Oct, 1977. Dennis Maruk wins the draw, Al McAdam lets it go, and Maruk tips the puck past Dunc Wilson for the Cleveland Barons vs the Pittsburgh Penguins. #Cleveland pic.twitter.com/fFOJ6Ph9we
Between Fedorov and Maruk were Noonan and Unger. Unger was an eight-time All-Star who had nine seasons of 30-plus goals and was considered an offensive force in the 1970s, so no surprise he was able to pull off this rare feat, but Noonan is the guy closest to Laughton, so I'm going to save that comparison to the end.
The three that occurred prior to expansion are harder to quantify as far as the rarity, especially as you go way back in the past, but Beliveau is a Hall of Famer who scored 507 career goals, Raleigh had fewer career goals than Laughton (101) but his career was interrupted by World War II for four years, and he ended up playing just eight full seasons in the NHL and at a time when the seasons were shorter, so comparing stats to that era is nearly impossible. Ditto Gottselig, who had 176 career goals, but also played predominantly in the 1930s when seasons were only 48 games long. As such, if he played seasons equivalent to today, he'd be on par with Perrault as far as production, meaning he wasn't a fourth liner by any means.
That brings us to the Noonan-Laughton comp. Noonan played in the NHL for 12 seasons for five different teams. Chicago was where he started and he played there the longest, which is why he is thought of as a Blackhawk. In his dozen seasons, he scored 116 goals in 629 games, which averages out to 15 per 82 games played. Laughton has also played for 12 seasons now and has 102 goals in 631 games played, or an average of 13 per 82 games.
As you can see, they've had very similar careers, from a productivity standpoint.
So, when Noonan scored four goals against the Detroit Red Wings (who, weirdly enough, have been involved in five of these 14 games), it would seemingly be a surprise... except it really wasn't Because for that holiday season in 1991, Noonan was on a heater.
On Dec. 29, 1991, Brian Noonan scored four times in a 6-4 Chicago Blackhawks' loss to the Detroit Red Wings. The four goals gave him the distinction of scoring seven consecutive Blackhawks' goals as he had the only three in the previous game.
Photo credit: Getty Images pic.twitter.com/P4mrWxqJRJ
Seven consecutive goals! In two games! And the only guy to score in both instances! Noonan finished with a career-high 19 goals in 1991-92. Seven of them came in back-to-back games. Now, when you combine the two games together, that might the most unlikely two games that a player ever had in NHL history, but we are looking at one game only here, and although the backend of Noonan's heater was something to behold, the Blackhawks lost that game.
In Laughton's case, the Flyers won. So, if we're setting the criteria as the most unlikely player to score at least four goals in a game, in which he was the only player for his team to score, and in which his team won, then Scott Laughton made history on Thursday.
And here is that history-making empty-netter, in case you missed it:
Scott Laughton: 4️⃣
Detroit Red Wings: 1️⃣#DETvsPHI | @Laughts21 pic.twitter.com/BDNfSSeNtt
Now, you'll never forget where you were when it happened, either. Nor will I have the hours back I spent researching this silly idea I had. But hey, it's all for prosperity's sake.
