Now that the Blackhawks have kept Ryan Donato through the trade deadline, they need to re-sign him.
General manager Kyle Davidson’s decision not to accept a ho-hum trade offer of a middle-round draft pick for Donato is justifiable, but it becomes much less so if the Hawks allow Donato to walk away as a free agent this summer.
The whole argument for keeping him, after all, centered not only on his stellar production — 51 points in 65 games after his two assists in the Hawks’ 6-2 loss Saturday to the Canucks — but also on his every-night work ethic and emotional investment in the Hawks’ future. That argument becomes moot if the Hawks don’t find a way to keep Donato around for that future.
All indications are that both parties are motivated to negotiate a contract and that the contract will get sorted out eventually.
Donato has earned a sizable raise on his current $2 million salary-cap hit, and the Hawks have more than enough cap space to give it to him, not that they’ll be reckless. Davidson already has made an initial offer.
“I would love to stay,” Donato said Saturday. “Ever since I’ve been here, it has felt like a second home to me. [My wife and I] had our first child here, and it’s been awesome. We love it in Chicago. If things work out, I would definitely love to be here.”
Projecting the contract
Donato, who will turn 29 in April, is a somewhat tricky player to appraise because his 2024-25 season is such an outlier — in a good way — from his career up to this point. He had 30 points in 78 games last season, his first with the Hawks, and he had never topped 31 points in any of his six full NHL seasons (with five franchises) before this.
On one hand, Donato’s 15.6% shooting percentage is unsustainable; it will probably regress toward his 10.6% career average next season. His shots-on-goal rate (per 60 minutes of ice time) has only slightly increased from 8.19 last season to 8.64 this season. It’s just that a lot more of those shots have gone in.
On the other hand, Donato’s skating speed and agility improvements — stemming from adjustments he made last summer — probably will remain. He might have permanently unlocked a new level to his game.
So what could his next contract look like?
There aren’t any perfect models, but the contract that journeyman forward Anthony Duclair signed with the Islanders last summer (four years with a $3.5 million cap hit) and the contract extension Ducks forward Frank Vatrano signed in January (three years with a $4.57 million cap hit) are two semi-comparable deals worth discussing.
In Vatrano’s case, his contract actually has a $6 million AAV (annual average value) with a rare case of deferred salary keeping the cap hit down, so it’s complicated and less relevant.
Still, Vatrano’s path of bouncing around the league as a bottom-six forward before finding his niche on a rebuilding team and experiencing a mid-career breakthrough is familiar. He has been moderately more productive than Donato throughout his career, but Donato’s camp might be able to cite this as an ambitious precedent.
Duclair, meanwhile, plays a different style than Donato, but his production throughout his career — and in his contract year last season — is similar to Donato’s.
A three- or four-year deal could be particularly appealing to Donato because he has changed teams so many times. He might relish some long-awaited stability, especially now that he has started a family.
A cap hit between Vatrano’s and Duclair’s numbers — perhaps around $4 million — also could be a reasonable compromise.