On Saturday night, Calgary Flames prospect Lucas Ciona had six points – a hat trick and a trio of assists – in a very one-sided victory for the Seattle Thunderbirds. That big effort helped propel him to a pretty impressive award: he was named the Western Hockey League’s Player of the Week on Monday.

Ciona played three games this past week, and a two-assist game against Medicine Hat was his “worst” one statistically. He followed that with a three-point game against Edmonton and his six-point effort against Everett. In six games this season, he has 14 points. For context, Ciona’s season is already his second-best offensively, beating out 13-point efforts in 2019-20 (in 53 games) and 2020-21 (in 23 games).

A sixth-round pick of the Flames in the 2021 NHL Draft (173rd overall), Ciona is in his Draft+2 season and turns 20 in January. You would expect him to be among the better players on his team and to take a step forward offensively due to his increased physical and mental maturity compared to younger players in the league. So far, he’s out to an excellent start, and is performing to the standards he set during an impressive Thunderbirds run to the WHL Championship series last spring. He might even be exceeding those lofty standards.

We’ll see if he can maintain anything close to this level of play for the remainder of the WHL season.