STOCKHOLM – Russia’s Yevgeni Malkin showed why he recently won his second NHL scoring title when he scored a hat trick in a 7-3 romp over host Sweden on Friday. It was the first three-goal performance at the 2012 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship.

But the Pittsburgh Penguins star’s big night out was far from the only memorable hat trick this tournament has witnessed over the years. Certainly, there are others that have been even more noteworthy for various reasons.

There’s no better time to pot three goals than in the gold medal game, and that’s precisely what Ville Peltonen did in 1995. Playing on the famous “Tupu, Hupu, Lupu” line (named after Donald Duck’s nephews in the Finnish version of the comic strip) with Jere Lehtinen and Saku Koivu, Peltonen’s hat trick led the Finns to a 4-1 victory at the Globe Arena in Stockholm. It was Finland’s first-ever gold.

Peltonen won’t get a chance to repeat his heroics in Helsinki this year, however. The 38-year-old was a surprise late cut from the 2012 roster selected by Finnish head coach Jukka Jalonen.

Tallying a hat trick in a massive upset is a perfect way to inscribe your name in the history books. When Poland hosted the 1976 World Championship, nobody thought it had a chance of defeating the mighty Soviet Union when the two neighbours met on opening day. But national team rookie Wieslaw Jobczyk had other ideas. He scored three times, including the second-period game-winner, to lead the Poles to a 6-4 triumph over Valeri Kharlamov, Vladislav Tretiak and other 1970’s Soviet greats.

In terms of sheer unlikeliness, this result ranks right up there with the USA’s victory over the USSR in the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” and Sweden’s loss to Belarus at the 2002 Olympics.

There are hat tricks that stand out just because they’re so out of character for the scorer. Take Karlis Skrastins. The stalwart Latvian defenceman, who tragically passed away in the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl plane crash last September, tallied three goals in one period in a 4-0 win over Latvia in 2003. That outburst equaled the Riga native’s entire goal-scoring output in 82 NHL games with the Nashville Predators that year.

Another natural hat trick that came under unusual circumstances was scored by Canadian captain Shane Doan at the 2007 Worlds in Moscow. The veteran Phoenix Coyotes forward and repeat IIHF World Champion had come under fire in the Canadian Parliament due to unsubstantiated allegations that he’d made a slur toward French-speaking officials during a 2005 NHL game.

When Doan notched three markers in just 6:25 in a 6-3 romp over Belarus, it was widely viewed as an answer to his critics. Doan’s name would be cleared, and Canada won gold with nine straight victories.

Sometimes, of course, hat trick performances are forgotten due to circumstances. Teemu Selänne had three goals when Finland built a 5-1 lead over Sweden at the 2003 quarter-finals played in Helsinki, and that would have just added to the Finnish Flash’s legend if his team had gone on to win. Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out. The Swedes roared back for a stunning 6-5 win, and the Finns were left with only heartache.

With increasing parity in international hockey, we’re unlikely to witness again the “extreme hat tricks” that occurred at tournaments in the past.

Take 1947. Sweden’s Lars Ljungman, a longtime player with AIK Stockholm, scored an all-time single-game record of 12 goals (four hat tricks!) in a 24-1 pulverizing of Belgium. Czechoslovakian superstar Vladimir Zabrodsky repeated that feat five days later when his host team hammered Belgium 24-0. (Those scoring outbursts even exceeded the fictional “Ovechtrick” – scoring nine goals in one game, as portrayed with Russian superstar Alexander Ovechkin in a mobile network operator’s TV commercial.)

A little closer to our era, at the 1973 tournament in Moscow, the host Soviets staged some outrageous offensive fireworks. If it wasn’t Alexander Martinyuk tallying a whopping eight goals against West Germany in an 18-2 victory, it was Boris Mikhailov and Vladimir Petrov scoring seven goals and five goals respectively as the USSR hammered the Poles 20-0.

Today, it’s more likely that someone will simply step up and score a “regular” hat trick in a big game, as Jaromir Jagr did last year in the Czech Republic’s 4-0 quarter-final win over the United States. The Czechs wound up winning bronze.

We’ve still got lots of hockey to play before the 2012 gold is handed out in Helsinki on May 20. So hold on to your hats.

LUCAS AYKROYD