Matt Puempel scoring a hat trick on Dec. 29 was surprising. We’re talking about someone who, prior to his goal-scoring outburst, had only scored six times in his NHL career prior, so suddenly exploding for three in one night - now a third of his career totals - was pretty massive.
Chris Kreider scoring a hat trick on Dec. 31 was also surprising, but for a different reason entirely. It’s not that Kreider scoring a hat trick is shocking in and of itself - it was his second career hat trick, and he’s now scored 76 times in his NHL career - it’s the timing of it.