The 2025-26 season was a weird one for the Calgary Flames in several ways.

The Flames registered just 2.54 goals-per-game, the ninth-lowest tally in franchise history, and the lowest per-game output they’ve had since 2013-14 – appropriately, the last time the franchise embraced a youth movement.

With so many established players headed out of town in exchange for futures, it was rather appropriate that a homegrown recent draft choice, winger Matt Coronato, led the team in points.

Coronato’s achievement was unique a few interesting ways. First, he was the first homegrown prospect to lead the club in points since Johnny Gaudreau did it in 2021-22. Second, 45 points was, by a fair margin, the lowest offensive output to lead the team over a full season in the franchise’s history. (The next-lowest full-season tally was Jiri Hudler’s 54 points in 2013-14.)

But let’s not throw shade on the achievement. While the Flames did struggle to generate offence over the season and had issues burying their chances when they created them, Coronato was one of the team’s more consistent performers in offensive situations. He was tied for second on the club in even strength points behind only captain Mikael Backlund and was second in power play points behind Morgan Frost.

In just his second full NHL season, Coronato saw his all-situations personal shooting percentage drop by 4.2% (and his five-on-five on-ice percentage drop by 0.2%). He was among the top handful of Flames forwards in expected goals for and scoring chances, while his high-danger scoring chance numbers were fairly middling relative to the rest of the team.

In other words: he led the team in scoring, and it was in a year where he was consistently pretty effective, but had a few areas where he could improve – getting more chances around the net-front area and burying them overall – that could lead to an offensive uptick in future seasons.

Coronato’s played two full NHL seasons. He was drafted just five years ago. He’s far from a finished product. But it’s a pretty encouraging sign that he was able to lead the team offensively, even under the less-than-ideal circumstances of 2025-26. He’ll be challenged by Matvei Gridin and Frost – and probably Backlund, too – for the scoring lead in 2026-27, and we’re fascinated to see if he can build on his first two pretty effective NHL campaigns.

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