The Long Journey To The Middle

The Hawks re-sign Ryan Donato. Hold your yawns.

It was actually a mild upset that Ryan Donato re-upped with the Hawks yesterday. It was widely known that the Hawks' offer had been on the table for a while, ever since the Hawks elected not to move him at the deadline. Maybe it was only for three years, reports vary, and the adding of a fourth was what clinched it. The $4M salary has always been out there. Maybe Donato and his agent got their toes up to the edge of unrestricted free agency and didn't like what they saw. Could be Donato really likes it here. He wouldn't be the first.

Ryan Donato is fine. He's aggressively fine. Any team certainly isn't worse for having him around, certainly not at $4M in a rising cap world. It's what he says about the Hawks' ambition that's...disappointing, to use an adjective that really underserves the emotion.

Because we all know that this is almost certainly the Hawks move this summer. Oh sure, they could surprise us with a trade we didn't see coming. They've given up on Mitch Marner, perhaps getting a signal that he's simply not interested and they're going to dump him before he can dump them. There aren't too many wingers available as free agents that move the needle. It's a weak class.

It's just that if the Hawks are going to center bringing back Donato as shoring up their top-six, that this is the proof of what they mean for '25-'26, then they're planning to basically be as bad as they were last season. Ryan Donato is not a top-six winger. Not for a team that takes itself seriously, at least. Not even for a non-playoff team, he's not a top-six.

Look around at some teams that didn't make the playoffs. Donato isn't getting into Utah's top six. Or Vancouver's. Or Calgary's. Or Anaheim's. This is a tier that the Hawks aren't even pretending they're going to try to approach, if Donato ends up being the breadth of their offseason.

Maybe that's fine. There's a plan after all, haven't you heard? Any growth from the Hawks basically comes from the growth of their young players, assuming they actually keep them all on the roster and not serving yet another predetermined apprenticeship in Rockford for the sake of it. If Bedard, Nazar, Korchinski all show more than they have in the NHL, and Levshunov and Rinzel establish themselves (they haven't played enough to know what they are yet, despite what SIX GAMES IN APRIL have told a lot of people), then the Hawks will be better. Sure, this plan tops out at being the Senators one day, which isn't really anything. But they're so far from even that it's not worth worrying about right now.

It's just...does Donato really help the two young centers get better? He's a shoosty-only winger who doesn't really create much for anyone else, isn't a brilliant forechecker, and whose defensive game is wildly overrated. He's certainly not going to shoot 17 percent again, 16 percent at even-strength, which means he's a 20-goal guy. And that's if he gets more power play time than a player of his ilk really should be getting.

Maybe having a player like that forces Bedard or Nazar to up their playmaking game, as the only way a player like Donato is useful is to keep feeding him the puck. That's a stretch, though. Especially in a world where the Hawks should want Bedard firing the puck at all times. It's his only hope of getting into the penthouse, as it's his only plus-plus skill.

Project this out a bit, even a year from now. One would hope that the Hawks would be adding wingers from somewhere, anywhere, that are actually top six material by then. Even if it's internal, some combination of Lardis, Desnoyers/Frondell, Boisvert, and lottery-tickets-to-be-named-later should be getting on the ice. So now we're packing Donato down to the bottom six. Perhaps that's his true calling. But again, he's not really a good defensive player, so what is it he'll be asked to do down there? A problem for another day, and not a terribly expensive one.

Whatever the Hawks become one day, Donato in ancillary to it. He's furniture for now, the rental apartment, not the condo or house down the line. But what the Hawks main aims should be, what really does matter, the development of Bedard and Nazar (right now there doesn't appear to be another forward on the roster worth caring about) isn't really aided by this. Moreover, it doesn't appear that there's going to be any other additions that do aid their development.

Perhaps Jeff Blashill at least has enough of a clue to keep Teuvo Teravainen with one of them for most of the season, something Anders Sorensen and Luke Richardson couldn't figure out. That's such a small step, though. The rest is Tyler Bertuzzi stealing more money, Ryan Donato grafting and churning his way into middling production at best, and...Ilya Mikheyev? Nick Lardis from the clouds? This is how the Hawks want to take a step forward?

Row row your boat, gently (so gently) down the stream.