Mike Harrington: For Tage Thompson, good things come in 3s as Sabres continue to pay tribute to Damar Hamlin

Jan. 6—You might call it some badly needed positive karma. Maybe it was fate. If you're a little more cynical, perhaps you'll say it was just a series of coincidences without any deeper meaning. But that's not my thinking.

From this angle, go with the first two viewpoints.

What Tage Thompson did Tuesday night in Washington was special. He scored a hat trick against the Capitals, going one better than 800-goal man Alex Ovechkin and giving the Sabres an overtime victory by pounding home his third goal of the night.

That's the hockey part. Now you have to ponder the life part.

As the Sabres reconvened for practice Thursday, they were still drawn back to Monday night. The horror in Cincinnati unfolded on the TV screens in their Washington hotel. Many of them are friends with players on the Bills, and they all pay attention. The whole #OneBuffalo thing is not some marketing slogan to them. It's real. Sabres winger Alex Tuch admitted Monday was a sleepless night in the wake of what befell Damar Hamlin.

The Sabres walked into the arena Tuesday wearing T-shirts that read "Love for 3," a tribute to Hamlin's uniform number. Then the game happened.

It was January 3.

Thompson notched three goals.

It was his third hat trick of the season.

The time of the winning goal was exactly three minutes of overtime.

And it was his 30th goal of the season.

"It was crazy," Tuch recalled Thursday. "I know everyone that was all over Twitter saw it. 'Tommer' came in and someone had tagged him and he was just in shock. It's crazy how all that works."

"I found that out right after the game, and I'm a big believer in God," Thompson said. "And I think that's a sign. I don't know if you can make up something quite like that. I think prayer is a powerful thing. And that's, really, all you can do in this situation. That's what we're going to continue to do. He's making some good strides right now. So just continue to pray and hope for the best."

In times like these, we're looking for any good signs we can find. Doctors gave us plenty more Thursday, and a tweet from the Bills that said Hamlin had shown "remarkable improvement" and "appears to be neurologically intact" was projected on the big screen in the Sabres' dressing room so players could see it as soon as they came off the ice.

Thompson has been good news for the Sabres all season. He was expected to be named to his first All-Star Game on Thursday night in tribute to a campaign that has him second in the NHL to Edmonton's Connor McDavid in goals.

Thompson had 38 goals in a breakout campaign last year. Fifty seems like a certainty this season, and the second 60-goal season in franchise history is in reach.

"You try to set goals for yourself in small increments. And, I think, when you reach the bar, you keep raising as you get closer to it," he said. "So, for me, that's something where your goal is continually changing for you. My goal is to get close to that number I hit last year and try to surpass it. And, obviously, we're already there. So that bar continues to climb and you just try to keep outdoing your expectations."

Coach Don Granato, who has known Thompson since his No. 1 center was a teenager, told him on the bench last season after his 30th goal that there was a lot more to get to than just 30. So he's been a proud papa every time he talks about his top-line revelation.

"Not only does he have the potential to do it and the capability to do it," Granato said, "but you can see it, see the determination to do it through the daily work ethic and routine he has established."

Thompson chuckled when I suggested he might have fired up Ovechkin by unleashing a one-timer from Ovi's longtime office in the left circle on the power play to give the Sabres a 3-1 lead in the second period. The Great Eight responded with two goals to temporarily put the Caps ahead 4-3.

"I don't know. I hope I didn't fire him up," Thompson said. "We want to keep that guy quiet when we play against him. Obviously, he's a great goal scorer, and I think we saw it against them. He scores a couple on us and he's a dangerous player. So we don't want to wake him up."

The night started with the Sabres' T-shirt display, a viral hit on social media. Captain Kyle Okposo credited the idea to Nicole Hendricks, the team's senior director of communications who joined the club last year from the Bills. Hendricks was quick to spread around credit, pointing out that "Love for 3" was Okposo's slogan.

She then pointed out how creative director Vicki Sitek did the design back in Buffalo while media relations director Chris Dierken made calls to find a vendor in the Capital district. And how Jourdan LaBarber, the team's senior coordinator of digital media content, took a 40-minute Uber into Maryland to do the pickup and delivery and get the shirts to the arena just prior to the players' arrival.

All so the team could make a public statement in support of Hamlin. Tuch showered praise on the Capitals for their pregame moment of silence, a noble gesture directed to the visiting team and its fans.

In the end, the Sabres gave those fans three hours of solace. Granato said the overtime goal will resonate as a major memory of this season, no matter how many Thompson's total finally lands at.

"That one will be a special one for sure," Thompson said. "That's a cool game. For it to end the way that it did means so much and for me to have a big part in that it really feels special for me."

"We were really happy to be able to get the win during a time that hasn't been the best in Buffalo for the past couple of weeks, to say the least," Tuch said. "And to hear that (Hamlin) is progressing and doing better? That's all I really care about. It's unbelievable news."

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