Any time of hat trick at the NHL level is more than impressive but when you do it in the span of just 8:40… it’s different.

That’s exactly how long it took Stars forward Jason Robertson to find the back of the net three times in Dallas’ 4-3 win over the New York Islanders on Sunday night.

“Yeah I saw [the hats on the ice],” Robertson said. “It’s been a while. It was pretty neat.”

Sam Steel opened the scoring at just 2:10 in the first period as he buried a loose puck on Ilya Sorokin’s blocker side.

New York tied the game at one in the second as Pierre Engvall fired one past Jake Oettinger who made 34 saves on the night.

With the game tied at two a side 13:26 in the second, New York’s Casey Cizikas hit Stars rookie defenseman Lian Bichsel and was eventually given a match penalty for an illegal hit to the head.

Bichsel left the game with an upper-body injury and did not return. Stars coach Peter DeBoer did not have an update on him after the game.

“From what I saw, it looked like their guy pushed our guy into me,” Oettinger said. “And I thought he made the right call. I’m happy to win that way.”

On that power play, Robertson scored two more goals to make it 4-2, a number that would be enough for Dallas to hold on.

“It’s definitely an emotional time,” Robertson said. “Obviously, you never want to lose a guy. I didn’t see the hit or anything, but obviously, Bichsel could not come back. We took another minor, so three minutes [on the power play], and we were able to execute and bear down and not take the time for granted.”

With the win, the Stars took both legs of their back-to-back to open the post-Four Nations faceoff schedule.

“It was a tough game, back to back coming out of the break,” Dallas coach Pete DeBoer said. “I think we ran out of some gas in the third period. Credit to them, they pushed hard. Sometimes, you need to win games in different ways in this league. Tonight, it was a couple of big power-play goals and a couple of big saves at the right time.”

Dallas will be back in action tomorrow when they travel to Columbus to take on the Blue Jackets.