William Nylander recorded the second hat trick of his career in a 6-3 rout of the Calgary Flames on Tuesday night, made even more interesting by the fact that his first hat trick was eight years ago to the day against the Boston Bruins in 2017.

Nylander is having an excellent season and seems to get better and better with every year that passes, which is exactly what his fans want to see after he re-upped for an eight-year contract extension a little over a year ago. His playmaking has taken a bit of a step back, but he’s been a man on the mission with regards to putting the puck in the net, currently at 33 goals and counting through 53 games. The former first-round pick has scored 40 goals in each of his last two seasons, and while he might not hit the 96-point career high he set last season, he’s only four goals shy of the league lead in the NHL, trailing only Edmonton Oilers forward Leon Draisitl, who has 37.

Back to Tuesday night’s events. Nylander scored three goals including an empty-netter, which, you can debate the validity of a hat-trick capped off by an empty-net goal if you want, but they all show up the same on the scoresheet! When you score a hat trick, it’s tradition for the home fans to litter the ice with hats, and in Nylander’s case, he got a home crowd’s worth of hats all over the ice at Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, championed by the many travelling Leafs fans that we’ve seen on the road in Alberta, Ottawa, Montreal, Buffalo, Detroit, the Florida teams, you get the idea.

The Swede commended the road fans for showing up once again when talking to the media postgame.

“It’s special,” Nylander said when asked what it felt like to see hats rain down from the road fans. “I mean, like I said, we have a huge following and the best fans in the league, the support we get wherever we play is tremendous. So, to see those hats come down was special.”

Maple Leafs goaltender Joseph Woll also spoke about Nylander postgame, sporting a massive grin when talking about having to face his teammate in practice the day before.

“I was just laughing,” Woll told reporters.”Yesterday in practice, he scored on me, like, every time he shot on me. So as soon as he got the puck on the 2-on-1, I’m like – there’s no question he’s gonna score.”

Scoring ten goals in two games on their quick trip through Alberta has to be resonating well with a Leafs team that had an extremely streaky month of January and has struggled to score goals at times this season. It has to feel even better knowing that they came out victorious over a Flames team that was well aware of their opponent’s travelling fanbase, and hoped to silence them early on. Flames forward Ryan Lomberg mentioned this prior to Tuesday night’s game.

“It will be a good motivation,” Lomberg said. “You want to shut them up for sure so we’ll be looking forward to having a good start & rolling through all 60 here.”

Unfortunately for Lomberg, not only did the Flames come out unsuccessful in trying to silence the road fans, they had to watch a tidal wave of hats hop over the glass. Better luck next time.

The Maple Leafs are back in action on Thursday night against the Seattle Kraken and will wrap up their road trip in Vancouver on Saturday before facing a two-week break for the 4 Nations Face-Off.