Lundell’s First Hat Trick, Coronato’s Four Points: Two Career Firsts on a Three-Game Night

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2026 — A THREE-GAME NIGHT ACROSS THE NHL

Three games, two career firsts: Anton Lundell’s first hat trick in Sunrise, and Matt Coronato’s first four-point game in Calgary — one goal, three assists, four points in all. Friday night belonged to the first-timers.

Start in Sunrise, where Anton Lundell arrived at Amerant Bank Arena with one goal in 13 games this season and left with a hat trick. The Florida Panthers beat the Winnipeg Jets 5–2 on Friday, their third straight win and Winnipeg’s eighth straight loss — and the game’s last two goals, both of them Lundell’s, turned a nervous third period into a party.

Sam Reinhart opened the scoring on the power play at 18:15 of the first period, working down low and beating Nico Daws to the far side. Lundell made it 2–0 at 2:38 of the second: his pass attempt on the rush was blocked, the puck came straight back to him, and he snapped a wrist shot from the top of the left circle past Daws’s glove.

Winnipeg’s one real push came gift-wrapped by Florida itself. Dmitry Kulikov was called for delay of game, the Panthers challenged the call, lost, and took a second penalty for the failed challenge. On the 5-on-3, Kyle Connor cut toward the slot and scored with a high wrist shot at 9:51 to make it 2–1 — with six seconds left on the power play. Seth Jones restored the cushion at 15:24, one-timing a Reinhart feed from the top of the slot on the power play, and when Morgan Barron scored his first goal of the season at 8:46 of the third to pull Winnipeg within 3–2, the building tightened up.

Lundell untightened it. He poked in a rebound at the edge of the crease at 13:33, then finished the hat trick with an empty-net goal at 18:21. “It has been one of those hard stretches,” Lundell said. “I felt like my game has been pretty good, we create a lot of chances. It just felt like nothing is going in. Just kept fighting and believing that, at some point, I’m going to be rewarded a little bit.”

Rewarded, in his 372nd NHL game, with the first hat trick of his career. It was Florida’s fifth hat trick of the season already — tied for the second-most in a single season in franchise history, behind only the six from the Presidents’ Trophy season of 2021-22.

Seth Jones is having a month

Lundell owned the night, but Jones owns the month. His goal and two assists were his fifth multipoint game of October, and his 18 points (two goals, 16 assists) tied Keith Yandle for the most points in a month by a defenseman in Florida history. Jones and Matthew Tkachuk (16 assists) became just the ninth set of teammates in NHL history to each record 15 assists in a single October — and only the third forward-defenseman pair to do it, joining Mario Lemieux and Paul Coffey with Pittsburgh in 1988 and Brian Leetch and Darren Turcotte with the Rangers in 1990. That is not bad company to keep.

Behind them, Akira Schmid made 22 saves for his third straight win. “Akira has just gotten better and better in every game he has played for us,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “It was a good night.” Florida (8-4-2) has won six of its past eight and beat Winnipeg for the second time in four days, after a 5–1 win in Winnipeg on Tuesday.

And spare a thought for the other crease. Daws, making his first start for the Jets since arriving as part of the trade that sent Connor Hellebuyck to New Jersey on Oct. 23, stopped 33 shots and still lost. Winnipeg (4-7-3) is 0-6-2 in its past eight, two defeats short of the franchise-record 10-game losing streak. “We have to stop the bleeding at some point,” Barron said. “There are no moral victories right now.” Coach Scott Arniel saw the effort — “That is a lot closer to how we need to play for 60 minutes” — but the Jets’ next chance comes Sunday at Carolina, and the schedule, as Barron put it, is not getting any easier.

In Calgary, revenge was a six-goal dish

If Florida’s win was a slow build, Calgary’s was a stampede. The Seattle Kraken beat the Flames 6–1 twice in the opening week of the season. On Friday at Scotiabank Saddledome, the Flames returned the exact favor, 6–2, behind the first four-point game of Matt Coronato’s career.

It started early and it started loud. Less than two minutes in, Adam Klapka dropped the gloves with 6-foot-9 Curtis Douglas at centre ice; Douglas took an extra minor, and Morgan Frost scored on the power play at 2:32, set up by Coronato and Joel Farabee. Frederick Gaudreau tied it for Seattle nine minutes later, but the second period was a rout: Aydar Suniev restored the lead at 5:45 with a one-timer set up by Frost, Matvei Gridin made it 3–1 with a power-play goal at 8:43 off a deflection, and Farabee buried an open chance at 10:40 off a cross-ice feed from Mikael Backlund.

That assist was Backlund’s 610th career point, moving the Flames’ captain into fifth place on the franchise’s all-time list. It also ended Philipp Grubauer’s night: four goals on 14 shots, pulled for Joey Daccord. Mackie Samoskevich’s power-play one-timer at 18:15 made it 4–2, and Coronato answered 39 seconds into the third, burying a top-corner shot from the slot. Ryan Strome closed the scoring at 18:14. Dustin Wolf made 20 saves for Calgary.

Coronato finished with a goal and three assists; Farabee had a goal and two assists; Frost and Gridin each had a goal and an assist. Both Coronato and Farabee now sit on 14 points, tied for the team lead. “When you score six, I just think everyone’s confidence is just a little bit more than it was before,” Farabee said. Calgary (6-7-0) has won five of its past six and five straight at home — and, in one of those statistics that sounds invented until you check it, the Flames have now won 61 consecutive games when scoring four or more goals, tying the Boston Bruins for the second-longest such streak in league history, behind only the Rangers’ 65 from 2011-14. Seattle (8-5-1) gets no rest from the lesson: its penalty kill gave up two power-play goals on the night.

The third final, and what Saturday brings

The night’s other game was in Las Vegas, where New Jersey’s 5–2 win over the Golden Knights — two goals each from Jack Hughes and Arseny Gritsyuk, 19 saves from Hellebuyck in his second win since the trade from Winnipeg, the very trade that put Daws in Winnipeg’s crease on Friday — gets the full treatment in our Devils–Golden Knights wrap. The league’s storylines, as usual, are all connected.

Saturday is a different animal entirely: 10 games, the busiest Halloween gameday since 2015, with Montreal chasing a fifth straight win, Connor McDavid visiting Matthew Schaefer on Long Island, and every eye in Nashville on Nikita Kucherov. Our Halloween slate preview has all five storylines, and the full league picture lives in the Stats Hub.

— Previously Staff