Thrashers fans flip over hat-trick tradition
(Story from the AJC)
The Atlanta Thrashers have a new hat trick tradition:

Traditionally, the hats are gathered into a bag, brought to the locker room after the game and offered up to the player who scored the three goals. Occasionally, a player will grab one as a memento.

On Tuesday night, with help from the Ice Girls, the 150 or so hats were quickly cleared off the ice into trash bins and brought to Hossa, who could have had his pick. He didn’t grab one. He never has.

“I heard the first time, the guy gets his choice [of hats], but I never noticed,” Hossa said. “I don’t know what they do with the hats and have never asked about it.”

He still has the puck from his first hat trick with the Thrashers, but has no interest in saving somebody’s hat.

Neither does Ilya Kovalchuk. He’s never kept a hat after scoring three goals at home.

“I don’t, I just [have them] throw it in the box,” he said. “There’s a box in Philips Arena for all the hats.”

It’s the hat-trick case, located on the arena’s main concourse. There, fans can see every hat thrown to the ice after a hat trick since the start of the Thrashers’ third season. Decals on the front of the display give details of each home hat trick that helped contribute to the collection.

It was an idea stolen from the Columbus Blue Jackets, after the Thrashers vice president of marketing, Jim Pfeifer, toured their arena. The idea has been a popular one with fans.

We talked about the Blue Jackets Hat Trick Box (and we have a photo) in our Six From Six Game Review with the Columbus Blue Jackets.  Six from Six is a series of live game reviews from 2006 where we visited six arenas around the country and discuss six things from each game that the team did well and other can learn from.

–Cudo

PS:  Thanks to Glen Gower’s blog for bringing this story to our attention.