{"id":114945,"date":"2021-09-13T00:10:59","date_gmt":"2021-09-13T04:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/?p=114945"},"modified":"2021-09-13T00:10:59","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T04:10:59","slug":"ryan-donato-seattle-kraken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/2021\/09\/13\/ryan-donato-seattle-kraken\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Donato Signs with the Seattle Kraken"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Ryan Donato was left unprotected in the expansion draft, and then not given a qualifying offer by the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/category\/sharks\/\" target=\"_self\">San Jose Sharks<\/a>, he became an obvious target. Not just for the Seattle Kraken, of course. Any team interested in a young centre with good possession numbers who can produce with limited ice time was interested. While Seattle didn&#8217;t select Donato in the Expansion Draft, they are interested enough to sign him now. But what are they getting?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">F Ryan Donato <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Kraken?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Kraken<\/a><br \/>1 year 1 way contract<\/p>\n<p>$750,000 cap hit<\/p>\n<p>Donato will be an RFA at the expiry of the contract <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iaPXBfrnae\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/iaPXBfrnae<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; CapFriendly (@CapFriendly) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CapFriendly\/status\/1437199262463496197?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 12, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Donato to Seattle Kraken<\/h2>\n<p>In signing Donato, the Kraken is getting a player on his fourth NHL team in four years. That can&#8217;t be good, right? It&#8217;s not the red flag you&#8217;d think, but Donato does have some flaws in his game. He is inexpensive, taking a big pay cut from his previous $1.9 million for 2020-21. He&#8217;s not adding speed to your lineup, and he&#8217;s probably not seeing the ice in the last five minutes to protect a one-goal lead. Likewise, despite his 14 goals in 62 games with the Minnesota Wild in 2019-20, his shot isn&#8217;t particularly dangerous. So after reading all that, why do we describe him as &#8220;an obvious target&#8221;? Let&#8217;s get to what he can do &#8211; and quite well, at that.<\/p>\n<h3>What Donato Brings<\/h3>\n<p>Ryan Donato was a second-round pick by the Boston Bruins for a reason. He is a very creative player, and the hockey sense he has lets him see opportunities. Donato is a deceptive skater, which lets him sneak past defenders very well. With similar linemates, they can take opponents by surprise on the attack, and he&#8217;s a very good passer. Unfortunately, like most of the Sharks last season, his linemates were a mixed bag. Dylan Gambrel and rookie <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/l\/leonajo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">John Leonard<\/a><\/strong> were his most frequent partners, despite his ability to play both centre and left-wing.<\/p>\n<p>On the Sharks, Donato was behind <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/c\/coutulo01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Logan Couture<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/h\/hertlto01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tomas Hertl<\/a><\/strong> at centre, and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hockey-reference.com\/players\/k\/kaneev01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Evander Kane<\/a><\/strong> on the wing. He wasn&#8217;t going to be getting a lot of opportunities past them. That being said, he still managed a respectable six goals and 20 points in 50 games last year. That&#8217;s with 12:30 of ice time and a below-average 5.8% shooting.<\/p>\n<h3>What it Means<\/h3>\n<p>He can easily improve on his 2020-21 numbers but will need the opportunity and linemates to do so. Put him with someone who can get to dangerous places and Donato can get them the puck. It&#8217;s going to come down to whether or not he earns the trust of his new coach, Dave Hakstol.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA &#8211; MARCH 31: Ryan Donato #16 of the San Jose Sharks is congratulated by teammates after he scored a goal against the Minnesota Wild in the second period at SAP Center on March 31, 2021 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Ryan Donato was left unprotected in the expansion draft, and then not given a qualifying offer by the San Jose Sharks, he became an obvious target. Not just for the Seattle Kraken, of course. Any team interested in a young centre with good possession numbers who can produce with limited ice time was interested. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3171,"featured_media":107898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4547,34,4548,5369],"tags":[1744,3059,6894],"class_list":["post-114945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharks","category-hockey","category-news","category-nhl","category-seattle-kraken","tag-expansion-draft","tag-ryan-donato","tag-seattle-kraken-news"],"modified_by":"Ben Kerr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/hockey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}