Comparing Timbers' Lack of a Hat Trick to Other MLS Hat Trick Droughts

It’s a truly bizarre stat, the most puzzling thing about the Portland Timbers, something that has no rational explanation to it. The Portland Timbers have been in Major League Soccer since 2011 and they have yet to record a hat trick during MLS play. It’s a well-known fact in the Timbers fanbase and has even been brought up by announcers during games when a Timbers player scores twice. The only other team in the league without a hat trick is St. Louis City SC, a team that is in just its second season of existence. Even clubs that are only two or three years old, such as Austin and Charlotte, have already had at least one instance of a player scoring three goals in a game, but not the Timbers.

Pretty crazy when you consider that the Timbers won the MLS Cup in 2015 and have been to two others since then. In addition to that, they won the MLS is Back Tournament in 2020 and have been a consistent playoff team for most of their MLS history. They have had plenty of great goalscorers through the years such as Diego Valeri, Fanendo Adi, and Sebastian Blanco but none of them ever scored three times in one game. The Timbers have more MLS Cups than MLS hat tricks; that’s impressive right there.

It is worth noting that the MLS Timbers do have a couple hat tricks, they just came in different competitions. In 2013, Frederic Piquionne scored four goals in a U.S. Open Cup match against the now-defunct Wilmington Hammerheads of USL Pro (now the USL Championship) and Yimmi Chara had a hat trick against Honduran club CD Marathon in the CONCACAF Champions League in 2021. That being said, it’s still crazy that not once in 13 years has any Timbers player scored a hat trick in a league match. They’ve had some close calls, heck, just a few matches ago against Nashville it seemed like Jonathan Rodriguez was about to attempt to score his third goal of the night from the penalty spot only for VAR to overturn the penalty. Even though the Timbers won that game 4-1, I couldn’t help but be mad that this stupid stat still existed when it seemed for a moment like that first hat trick was finally about to happen.

I couldn’t help but wonder if any other MLS franchises have had lengthy hat trick droughts. Did any team have worse luck with hat tricks at any point in time than the Timbers have? Has any team gone anywhere near as long as the Timbers without a player getting a hat trick? I decided to go on the Wikipedia article listing every hat trick in MLS history to find out the answers to these questions and compare the Timbers’ hat trick drought to all the other current MLS franchises. I compared how many hat tricks every team has, how long every team took to score their first hat trick, and every team’s longest hat trick drought. In short, no team has had harder luck with hat tricks than the Portland Timbers, but there are some other notable instances of teams going long stretches without a player scoring three goals in a game. It’s worth noting that this list doesn’t include defunct teams and only MLS regular season matches are considered.

Fewest hat tricks:

As previously mentioned, only the Timbers and two-year-old St. Louis City don’t have hat tricks. All the other teams with two or fewer hat tricks are younger than the Timbers. Austin FC and Charlotte FC, the two teams that have one MLS hat trick, came into existence in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

Seasons it took to score first hat trick:

ALL CAPS indicates that the drought is still active

The Timbers have taken far longer than any other MLS team to get their first hat trick. They are currently in their 14th season of MLS play and still have yet to get a hat trick. The Timbers are the only team that has taken over a decade to record their first MLS hat trick, and Portland currently holds that particular record by 5 seasons and that number will likely increase. However, there have been a few other teams that took a long time to get an MLS hat trick.

Toronto FC, founded in 2007, didn’t record an MLS hat trick until Sebastian Giovinco’s three-goal performance in 2015 against NYCFC, the team’s 9th season of existence. It’s not entirely surprising that Toronto took this long considering that 2015 was the first year they even made the Playoffs and TFC was often near the bottom of the standings during the initial years of the club’s existence. 

The San Jose Earthquakes, an MLS original, didn’t have any hat tricks until the franchise’s 8th season in 2003 when they got two of them in the span of a week, US national team legend Landon Donovan scored the first hat trick in club history against the Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City) and just a week later Dwayne De Rosario scored three goals against the Dallas Burn (now FC Dallas). 

Longest hat trick droughts:

ALL CAPS indicates that the drought is still active

The Timbers have the longest hat trick drought in MLS history, but there is one other team that went over a decade without a hat trick, and that team is the Columbus Crew. Columbus went through a 12-year stretch without a hat trick, which is just a year shorter than the Timbers’ current drought. 

In 2004, Edson Buddle scored four goals against the New York MetroStars (now the New York Red Bulls), which was the Crew’s second hat trick in 2 weeks. They then went 12 years without one before Ola Kamara broke the curse against Real Salt Lake in 2016. 

Similar to the Timbers, the Crew were far from a bad team during this stretch. They were in the Playoffs more often than not and they won the MLS Cup in 2008. They also won the Supporters’ Shield that year as the team with the most regular season points and they won another Supporters’ Shield the following year. (I can’t help but mention that Columbus also lost MLS Cup 2015 during this 12-year period).

Orlando City SC has also gone nearly a decade without a hat trick and if it wasn’t for a man by the name of Cyle Larin, they would also be a part of the no hat trick club. The Canadian netted two hat tricks during Orlando’s inaugural MLS season in 2015 and no Orlando player has scored one since. It’s not like Orlando has been a terrible team either, they struggled in their first few MLS seasons but since then they have had some good teams and have consistently been in the Playoffs. Although they’ve never been to an MLS Cup, they did win the U.S. Open Cup in 2022.

Longest current hat trick droughts:

Portland has the longest current hat trick drought in Major League Soccer, with aforementioned Orlando City in second. The Chicago Fire and New England Revolution each have to go back to 2017 to find their last hat trick and CF Montreal hasn’t scored a hat trick since their 2021 rebrand, with their last one coming in 2018 when they were still known as the Montreal Impact.

New England’s case is particularly interesting because before Kei Kamara’s hat trick in 2017 against Orlando, the Revs hadn’t had one since 2010. Kamara’s hat trick is also the last one to date that New England has. So, during the time that the Timbers have been an MLS franchise, the Revolution have only had one hat trick which isn’t much better than Portland. Since the Revs are an MLS original, they have a lot of MLS hat tricks in their history before this current stretch unlike the Timbers, who were in the USL First Division when New England got most of their hat tricks.

Although it’s head-scratching to think that the Timbers have no hat tricks in over a decade of play in Major League Soccer, they’re far from the only team that has had bad luck in the hat trick department. Columbus went 12 years without one, Toronto didn’t score their first until their 9th season in the league, Orlando hasn’t had once since their inaugural season which was nearly a decade ago, and New England only has one hat trick since the Timbers joined MLS. The Timbers will get their hat trick, it may be this year, it may be in 20 years but it will happen eventually.