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What can be a extra important accomplishment … Twenty objectives from the blue-line, or 200 blocked pictures?
Calgary Flames workhorse MacKenzie Weegar doesn’t need to come throughout as grasping, however can’t a man have each?
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“The 200 blocked pictures can be fairly cool,” Weegar instructed Postmedia. “, I control that stat. I assumed I might perhaps get to 200 hits, as nicely, however I feel I might need fallen off a little bit bit. However these are each fairly neat. I feel with little milestones in your profession, while you hit these numbers, you need to acknowledge them a bit, simply because it’s such a grind and it’s a exhausting recreation and a tough league.”
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The toughest half, after all, is lighting the lamp, though Weegar has been on a roll.
Heading into Saturday’s showdown with the arch-rival Edmonton Oilers, he had 19 snipes on the season, greater than double his earlier career-high. He’d additionally been credited with 189 blocks.
Throughout your entire NHL, only one defenceman has extra buries in 2023-24. Solely six non-netminders have dead-ended extra pucks in their very own zone.
“I’d clearly like to get to twenty objectives, too,” Weegar stated. “That may be one other little feather within the hat.”
It will be extra than simply that.
It may very well be an unprecedented double.
Within the 20 years because the NHL began monitoring a few of the much less attractive stats, no participant has ever completed a season with 20 objectives and 200 blocked pictures.
Erik Karlsson and Roman Josi are the one dudes to hit each marks at any level all through their careers, however these previous Norris Trophy winners have by no means managed a 20/200 combo in a single marketing campaign.
Perhaps that explains why Flames bench boss Ryan Huska was torn when requested which quantity can be a much bigger accomplishment for this heart-and-soul type. Previous to Saturday’s Battle of Alberta, the 30-year-old Weegar was on tempo for 21 and 207.
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“I feel each,” Huska replied. “The whole lot about his play over the past short time has been superior. He’s one among our guys that I really feel like has discovered methods to take pleasure in himself when he’s taking part in the sport, and but he has discovered a method to elevate his aggressive degree to one thing I haven’t seen since he’s been right here.
“You’ll be able to inform while you have a look at him that he’s happy with the place his recreation is at. And while you watch him play, he’s doing all of the issues that we ask of him proper now. He’s been actually necessary for us this yr and I feel his recreation goes to proceed to develop, whether or not it’s the goal-scoring or his willingness to be a extremely good staff participant with all of the shot-blocks he’s had.
“Whether or not we’re out of it or in it, there ought to by no means be a change in the way you play the sport, and he has been an amazing instance of that.”
With the Flames now formally eradicated from the playoff race, the main target has turned to chasing particular person achievements and constructing for the longer term.
And whereas Weegar would like to pad his stats, to affix a brief checklist of Flames rearguards to empty 20 objectives in a single winter, the precedence is to set a optimistic instance for his retooling staff. There are presently six rookies on Calgary’s roster.
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“I need the younger children to be taught, I need them to have a number of enjoyable and to not get too happy,” stated Weegar, now in his seventh season as an NHL mainstay and signed with the Flames for seven extra. “I need to present them that it takes a number of work and consistency is big and simply preserve constructing your recreation. I feel it’s large, these final video games, only for them to recollect what it was like right here — that it was enjoyable but it surely was tough — and convey that into subsequent season.
“You’re all the time being watched on this league,” he continued. “You’ll be able to’t take a day without work. It’s a kind of cutthroat companies the place it’s, ‘What have you ever executed for me these days?’ They need to see your character. They need to see the way you’re dealing with the whole lot, your temper, your perspective. I feel it says lots a few man to see how they play in these final video games.”
No matter occurs over this closing stretch, it says lots about Weegar that he has a crack at this never-been-done-before double.
Twenty objectives? 2 hundred blocked pictures? Who says you possibly can’t have each?
“I suppose it reveals that you just’re competing, you’re contributing, that you’d do something it takes to win for this staff,” Weegar stated. “That’s simply what my mindset has been like all yr.”
wgilbertson@postmedia.com
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