The Carolina Hurricanes have seen some ups and downs in 2016-17, to the point that it might be easy to overlook the war chest of young talent GM Ron Francis has put together.
(Seriously, Jordan Staal is one of the old men of the core group at 28.)
Sometimes it takes a superlative performance to really drive that point home, and that happened on Tuesday, as 19-year-old rookie Sebastian Aho generated the first hat trick by a Hurricanes rookie in 16 years.
His first goal of the night was especially brilliant, as you can see in the video above of his impressive hat trick.
You can also watch it in one handy GIF via Stephanie Vail:
all 3 Aho goals in 1 gif pic.twitter.com/HVUwGcWfRa
— steph (@myregularface) February 1, 2017
Remarkable stuff. Again, this was a pretty rare achievement:
From @hockey_ref, here are the Hurricanes/Whalers since 1987-88 to get a hat trick at age 20 or younger. pic.twitter.com/f8yUGG5iQO
— Cory Lavalette (@corylav) February 1, 2017
Update: The Hurricanes ended up beating the Flyers 5-1 on Tuesday.