Ryan Donato was the Chicago Blackhawks MVP this season, now they must re-sign him

Connor Bedard may be the face of the franchise, but it was Ryan Donato who was the better overall player this season for the Chicago Blackhawks.

If you had predicted that to start the season, hopefully, you have cashed in a very nice prop bet payout.

Up until this season, Donato was a solid bottom-line center. He could do just a bit of everything well, but nothing excellent.

That is not meant to be a slam against Donato. All teams need a guy like Donato on the third or fourth line to provide solid production.

However, this season, Donato had a career year, and that is what makes him the team's MVP in my eyes.

When the team got out of the gate with inconsistent energy, Donato was playing hard every shift. When the team struggled to score goals to start the season, Donato had 10 through November.

It was looking like Donato would likely have a career season like Jason Dickinson did during the 2023-24. A nice 40-point season with 20 goals and maybe 20 assists was in the works.

A brilliant March, during which Donato scored 10 goals and dished out nine assists, allowed Ryan to not only set a new career high in goals and assists but also completely obliterate his previous career bests.

What was more impressive is that 26 of his 31 goals came at even strength. He did not need a team down a player or an empty net to put up impressive goal-scoring numbers.

Sure, power-play goals are great as you want to capitalize on the man-advantage, but scoring 5v5 goals is what made Donato a coveted player at the trade deadline.

The club did try to extend the pending unrestricted free agent before the deadline, but both sides were unable to close the deal.

Now the Blackhawks must re-sign him, even if this season turns out to be just a career campaign.

It sounds like Donato would like to stay, so the Hawks got that going for them. The question will come down to cost and years.

If they can sign him to a two- or three-year deal, who cares if it will be in the $4-$7 million range. It would be a short-term deal that could carry him until he is 31 or 32 and would not clog up the books in the long run.

The problem is if he wants a four-year deal or longer, and in that more expensive range. He has a shot to get one with the salary cap going up and teams desperate to make sure they can reach the cap floor.

Then that might be hard to stomach, given the risk of his production returning to his normal averages and then being stuck with a large cap hit when the franchise still could use some cap flexibility to pay promising forwards Frank Nazar and Oliver Moore in their second contracts.

The bind the Hawks put themselves in is that they decided not to capitalize on his trade value likely being at its highest. Therefore, they just cannot let him walk out the door for nothing.

Especially when he is 29 and even if his production returns to the mean, he still does all the little things well that a team trying to emerge from a rebuild should want skating on the third or fourth line.

Also, you cannot discount that maybe Donato is just a late bloomer capable of scoring 20-30 goals for the next couple of seasons. If he does that somewhere else, that is going to look really bad for the Blackhawks, especially since they passed on cashing in his trade value.