Flames top prospect Coronato at centre of Harvard's stellar start
First-round pick has pivoted positions and led Crimson to unbeaten record
Matt Coronato didn't ask for an explanation.
Nobody offered one.
To hear him tell it, the Calgary Flames prospect simply checked the lines before a pre-season practice at Harvard University, noticed he was listed as the top centre rather than his usual stead on right wing and rolled with it.
“That's just how it was drawn up on the board,” Coronato said with a shrug. “And we went from there with it.”
It's probably not going to change any time soon.
Coronato and his Harvard Crimson stormed out of the gates at 7-0, the best start for this Ivy League program since 1988. They were putting their spotless record on the line in Friday's top10 showdown with the Michigan Wolverines.
Coronato, arguably the most fascinating forward of the future in the Flames pipeline, seems to be settling in just fine as a middleman.
Heading into the two-game set at Michigan, he'd been held off the scoresheet only once in seven games and was leading the Crimson with 11 points (five goals and a half-dozen helpers). Across the NCAA'S Division 1 landscape, he ranked fourth among all skaters in average points per game, at 1.57.
Coronato, who turned 20 earlier this month, hit the ice Friday with a plus-8 rating and was winning 56.6 per cent of his faceoffs.
“It's really important, I think, to be a guy who can play different areas and different roles,” Coronato said. “A big focus for me recently has been to grow my defensive side of the game. That is obviously an important part of the game, and I think it's a good thing to be able to play anywhere in the lineup and be trusted defensively. As a player, you want your coaches to have confidence in you. Whether you're up a goal, down a goal, whatever the situation is, I want to be a guy that can be counted on. So I feel like any time you can do something to gain your coach's trust, it's a good feeling.
“And it's not too big of a deal, in terms of a difference (from wing to centre). We have a lot of focus on first guy back — anyone on a line can be the low guy in the defensive zone. Obviously, on a defensive zone faceoff, you're going to start out there. But for us, any of us can play low, so the biggest thing is just being the guy that takes the faceoff, and I take a lot of pride in that. That's another area I definitely want to improve on.”
When the Flames selected Coronato in the first round of the 2021 NHL draft, they were envisioning a guy who would someday fill the net from the right flank. That hasn't necessarily changed — he'll likely work as a winger whenever he turns pro — but his future employers certainly don't mind that he's been entrusted as a centre at the collegiate level. The position switch is proof of Coronato's commitment to keeping the puck out of his own net. If he was strictly a sharpshooter, interested in scoring and not much else, Crimson coach Ted Donato might be hiding him outside the dots.
“I think Ted really trusts him because he's such a smart player and he can distribute the puck and he's reliable and good in the faceoff circle and all that stuff,” said Flames development coach Ray Edwards, who has watched each of Coronato's seven games this fall, five live and two more via video. “I don't know that we see him as a centreman moving forward, but I think it's really good that the coach trusts him to play there. This is only going to help him. To have that flexibility and versatility is excellent, but it changes his game a little bit. Instead of being really hard on the forecheck and being first on pucks in the offensive zone, he's coming up from behind a lot of times and distributing it. When he's a winger, a lot of times he's chipping and going to get it, or the other winger is putting it in and he has to be first to the puck.”
Edwards wasn't surprised that Coronato — Harvard's leading scorer last winter as a freshman — was unfazed by the shift to centre, prompted by an injury to one of his pivot teammates.
“He is just so eager to learn, so eager to get better,” Edwards said. “He wants to know what he has to do to not only be dominant there, but he's always thinking about what's next for him and he wants us to make sure we're always communicating in terms of what those details are. He's just a real good student of the game.”