Calgary Flames forward Matt Coronato has racked up 22 shots on net over a three-game span.
To put that in perspective, his teammate Yegor Sharangovich — another guy in the early stages of a big-ticket contract extension — has totalled 22 for the season so far.
Fellow Flames forwards Sam Honzek, Connor Zary and Adam Klapka haven’t even hit that number yet.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s anything about the way he scored,” Flames head coach Ryan Huska said after Coronato snapped out of his slump with a top-shelf rocket in Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues. “It’s just scoring. He’s had a lot of shots. I know he was up there again tonight.
“He’s been a threat now again, which is important for our team.”
Coronato had, before finally finding the back of the net in St. Louis, become a bit of a poster boy for a scoring-starved squad that had played nearly eight full periods without a single tally.
Maybe now he’s a reminder of the most obvious way out of it.
Shoot.
And shoot.
And shoot some more.
Coronato put 11 pellets on net during Friday’s defeat to the Chicago Blackhawks, matching Jack Hughes and Kirill Kaprizov for the NHL’s single-game high so far this season.
He followed up with five in Minnesota, then six more in St. Louis.
How rare is it to see this sort of shot volume over a three-game stretch?
According to NHL Stats, there hasn’t been this sort of rubber roll from any Flames player since Mikael Backlund peppered 22 on target during a trigger-happy run in January 2022.
Before that, you’d be going back to Jarome Iginla in 2003.
In fact, there are only five dudes in franchise history to fire 22 or more shots across a string of back-to-back-to-back outings — Coronato, Backlund, Iginla, Theoren Fleury and Al MacInnis. (Iggy, Theo and Chopper did so on multiple occasions.)
“For me, I want to get pucks to the net when I can,” Coronato stressed during Tuesday’s pre-game interview with Derek Wills of Sportsnet 960 The Fan. “But I want to make sure that when I’m shooting, they’re high-quality chances. Sometimes, obviously, the right play is to move it.
“But I think for me, I can get to the net more, get to the hard areas. I think a lot of my shots have been from the outside, so I’m going to be focused on getting to the net, getting around the paint. I guess the closer you are to the net, the better chance you have to score, right?”
When Flames fans talk these days about improving the odds, they are focused on the possibility that their favourite team could finish at or near the bottom of the league standings and reap the rewards by drafting a future difference-maker such as Gavin McKenna, Ivar Stenberg or Keaton Verhoeff.
If the schedule wrapped today, the Flames would have the most balls in the lottery as they currently sit dead-last at 4-12-2.
It’s easy, from the outside, to hope this frustrating fall gives way to a lost season — ‘Mission McKenna,’ as some are calling it.
Of course, Coronato & Co. can’t and won’t think that way.
Since he’s such a vital piece of the long-term plan, it’s encouraging that this 22-year-old winger seemed so determined to drag his team out of its goal drought.
When Coronato, under pressure from a pair of back-checking Blues, whistled that wrist shot by Jordan Binnington’s blocker in Tuesday’s middle stanza, you could likely hear the sigh of relief back in Calgary, roughly 2,300 km away.
It was only Coronato’s second snipe in a four-week funk.
It was the Flames’ first tally in a span of 154:53.
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“When you go a couple games without scoring, it wears on them, there’s no doubt about that,” Huska told reporters in St. Louis. “But I think the key thing is to make sure you stay true to how you have to play the game. I mean, Matt is a good example of that. Over the last three games, he’s shooting the puck a ton, and he got rewarded tonight.
“He’ll continue to get rewarded if he continues to do what he’s done the last few games.”
This is a tough pace to maintain, as the club history books will show, but Coronato’s shooting spree paid off in St. Louis.
Ready, aim, finally …
“I think part of it too is bearing down,” Coronato said earlier this week. “We’ve had chances, we’ve had looks. Everyone just needs to take a step back and when they have their opportunity, make sure we put it through the back of the net.”