It’s rare that an athlete puts on a memorable performance that teammates, opponents, coaches and fans will remember for a long time. Everyone who was in St. Paul, Minnesota at a packed capacity Excel Energy Center got a treat courtesy of star Wild left wing Marian Gaborik.

The 25 year-old Slovak torched the Rangers for a franchise best five goals and matched his career high with six points factoring in on every Minnesota goal in a 6-3 victory last night.

It was the first five-goal performance from an NHL player since Sergei Fedorov accomplished the impressive feat with Detroit in an OT win over the Capitals 11 years ago back on Dec. 26, 1996.

It started when he was the beneficiary of a Pavol Demitra pass for an easy one-timer past Ranger netminder Henrik Lundqvist which tied the score at one in the first.

He’d score twice more in a 1:51 span to start the second period via the man-advantage for three straight goals and the hat trick less than 26 minutes into the contest.

After netting his second from Demitra again stationed perfectly in front, Gaborik received a pass from defenseman Brent Burns and then came out of the left wing corner maneuvering around a couple of Rangers before deking Lundqvist and flipping a backhand into the top of the net for his ninth career hat trick and first since April 9, 2006 against the Avalanche.

With his team nursing a 3-2 lead after Martin Straka tallied from Jaromir Jagr and Scott Gomez, Minnesota’s best player helped restore a two-goal lead when he perfectly setup teammate Pierre-Marc Bouchard’s power play slapshot for point No.4.

The show continued in the final stanza. When his team needed it most, Gaborik again stepped up. He immediately responded to rookie Nigel Dawes’ fifth with his fourth of the night by being in the right place at the right time to rebound home an Aaron Voros shot just 41 seconds later to give the Wild a 5-3 lead with 12:04 left.

Amazingly, it wasn’t over as Gaborik put the exclamation point on a vintage performance by beating Lundqvist cleanly on a breakaway deking him and going stickside 1:34 later which completed the scoring on what MSG Network’s Sam Rosen termed, “Marian Gaborik Night in St. Paul.”

A simple but effective description of what took place as the Blueshirts took a step back after their 4-0 home shutout over Pittsburgh. They’ll look to bounce back tonight against another tough Western Conference foe at Colorado.

As for Gaborik’s big night, it could’ve been even more. Number six was on his stick a couple of times during a late man-advantage with only Ranger backup Stephen Valiquette preventing it.

Afterwards, the No.1 Star saluted the crowd and was then mockingly carried off the ice by teammates Sean Hill and Keith Carney.

Here was Gaborik after his special performance expressing what it felt like to the Associated Press:

“One time I got five goals when I was playing back home for a pro club back there, but this is just totally different. You score five goals in the NHL it’s just a totally different experience. To reach it here with these guys in front of our fans is just unbelievable.“  

“It was pretty amazing,” Wild captain Mark Parrish added. “He was banking ‘em in out of the air, scoring on breakaways, skating through everybody with it, making highlight-film goals. My God, he was doing it every which-way tonight.

“When a guy like that’s feeling it, it gets pretty scary for the other team.”

You betcha. All you can do is tip your cap to Gaborik. It was his night.