Blackhawks forward Ryan Donato's mindset to 'keep marching forward' has powered career year

BOSTON — If Ryan Donato scores at least once in the Blackhawks’ final four games, he’ll reach 30 goals on the season.

After celebrating his 29th birthday Wednesday with friends and family back home in Boston — the Hawks’ schedule lined up perfectly for him — it would be especially fitting if he accomplished that feat Thursday against the Bruins.

Donato has slumped a bit lately, going four consecutive games without a point. And he was very frustrated after the Hawks’ poor effort Tuesday against the Penguins, calling for the team to “buy in and show up every night, not just every so often.”

Through the team’s struggles, however, Donato’s hustle has been at times the lone constant. He has consistently delivered, even when nobody else has. The fact he has put up 59 points — shattering his previous career high of 31 — on a 22-46-10 team is remarkable.

Back in a random December game, when Donato had just 11 goals to his name, he had a two-on-zero rush stopped by Kraken goalie Joey Daccord. The next day, Donato discussed his mental approach to moving on from missed chances instead of rueing what could have been.

Given the context of his impressive season as a whole, his comments that day are worth publishing.

"There's no real thing you can do that's going to make you less upset about it," Donato said Dec. 20. "But in the heat of the game, if you're dwelling on something that happened, it's hard to get yourself to a mind state where you're doing something better [or] doing something where you're going to create another chance. You can't live in the past. You've got to keep marching forward.

"With how many games we have, there's something new every game that you can worry about — or you can use it to make yourself better. It has taken me a while to get into that mindset where you can just move on and use it as a positive rather than a negative. I can think about it in the way of, 'OK, well, I'm creating those chances,’ rather than being like, 'I missed the one chance.' I can go try to get another chance like that."

Hockey can be so random: any goalie can rob a point-blank shot and get fooled by a fluky deflection on the same shift. That’s why Donato feels like it’s not worth beating himself up over anything.

"There's going to be chances that you throw a puck in that you don't think really has a chance — you're just trying to create a rebound — and it somehow sneaks in," he added. "You can think about it both ways."

Improved skating has been arguably the biggest reason for Donato’s breakout season. Working with a Tampa-based skating coach last summer, he eliminated what used to be a weakness of his game.

This summer, he plans to do even more skating work. He’ll be based in Boston, as always, but he’ll make four or five separate trips to Tampa, calling it "even more of an investment."

"I was fortunate enough to unlock something this year — as far as getting that skating a little bit better — but I think there’s still a lot of room to grow," he said Tuesday. "I’m still learning a lot of that stuff that they taught me."

Donato’s pending free agency will also hang over his summer, at least until July. He deserves a big raise on his current $2 million salary-cap hit, which has made him the best-value player in the NHL this season (excluding entry-level contracts) when measured by dollars per point.

He and the Hawks have both indicated mutual interest in working out a contract, but they haven’t reached a financial compromise yet.

“My mindset hasn’t changed: I want to be here,” Donato said. “But there’s no update on that front.”