The Calgary Flames can’t seem to escape the drama.
This past weekend, Matt Coronato’s agent took to Twitter/X to voice displeasure over his clients AHL assignment earlier in the week. It now makes for the third straight season this has happened to a player on the roster after Jonathan Huberdeau and Nikita Zadorov.
Many, like us here at The Win Column, agreed sending Coronato to the AHL was a bad decision for the player and the organization. Some disagreed with that, and now it looks like NHL insider Elliotte Friedman is joining that club.
32 Thoughts segment on the Flames
On Monday’s episode of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast, Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas discussed Coronato’s agent’s retweets and then deletion of those remarks on social media and what it means for the team’s prospect:
There were a couple of things here, the one thing that concerned me about it when it was brought to my attention… I know the Flames have lost two games in a row but generally, this has been a very positive start for them. As frustrated as you might be as a prospect, and as frustrated as you might be as an agent, you can’t do this stuff when the team is winning. If the team is losing that is one thing, but the team is winning. I am sure that is one of the reasons it got taken down.
The second thing is, I remember this happened a couple of years ago with [Jonathan] Huberdeau and the veteran players on the team were mad about it. They were saying “look things aren’t going well here, we got people picking at us from outside, we can’t have any self-inflicted damage.” There was a team meeting about it and they were mad. So I worry for Coronato that the veterans will look at this and say “Wait a second, we’re doing well and this is what is coming out?” It’s not going to go over very well and it’s going to have to be settled.
Now Coronato may be right, maybe he does deserve to play, people can have their arguments about whether or not he’s right to feel this way or not again I understand everyone wants to be in the NHL, but you can’t do it when the team is doing well. I’ve had constantly players tell me that over the years. You know when teammates are unhappy, you know when things are going well.
When things are going great, or good enough for the team, if you’ve got a problem you’ve got to handle it internally and bide your time. That is the thing I’m concerned about here for Coronato is that things have generally been going well for the Flames, who are doing whatever they can to build some positive momentum. He’s probably going to have to deal with an unhappy organization and some unhappy teammates if they are aware of this. That’s the concern I have for this… the timing was bad.
To close things out, Bukauskas wondered if the removal of those tweets meant that the player did not give approval to his representation to make that move. In most cases that is unlikely, but entirely possible in this situation.
An unnecessary speedbump
At the end of the day, absolutely no one here is happy. The player, agent, organization, and team are probably all upset this happened. It’s also the unnecessary drama that is coming at a time when the Flames finally have some good news to go off of.
Probably in everyone’s best interests to squash this immediately and move on to when Coronato next plays in the NHL with the team this season.
