By Mike Loftus / The Patriot Ledger
This much, we know: It’s a trade that will reverberate throughout the South Shore for years.
Charlie Coyle of Weymouth becomes a Bruin. Ryan Donato of Scituate becomes an ex-Bruin. Of all the players on all the roster and reserve lists of 31 NHL teams, they were traded for each other on Wednesday.
In the short term, the Bruins, and therefore Coyle, appear to be the winners. The B’s, long believed to be seeking help at forward in advance of Monday’s 3 p.m. NHL deadline, get a player with a great deal of experience as a center and as a winger. They get almost 500 games of NHL experience, they get size (6-3, 220), they don’t get old (Coyle is 26), and they didn’t acquire a rental: Coyle’s contract runs through next season, at $3.2 million.
And Coyle gets to come home to play for the team he cheered for when he was at Weymouth High and Thayer Academy, and all the way through his one season with the South Shore Kings, after which the Boston University-bound forward was selected in the first round of the 2010 NHL Draft (No. 28 overall) by the Sharks. (The Wild traded star defenseman Brett Burns to acquire Coyle’s rights, Devin Setoguchi, and a first-round pick.)
Much of what makes the deal good for Coyle makes it hard for Donato. Born in 1996 (so he’s 22), Donato was a toddler in Scituate when his father, Ted, ended his first run as a Bruin in 1999, and a little more conscious of what was going on when his dad completed his NHL career with the B’s in 2003-04. Donato played at Dexter Academy and spent part of a season with the Kings before the Bruins drafted him in 2014 (Round 2, No. 56 overall), then played under his dad at Harvard University before signing with the B’s last March 18. And now he (plus a fourth- or fifth-round draft pick in June) belongs to the Wild.
None of this, of course, had any bearing on the trade Bruins general manager Don Sweeney -- a former Bruins teammate of Ted Donato -- swung with Wild GM Paul Fenton. The playoff-bound B’s have one glaring hole in their lineup -- No. 3 center -- that Coyle has the capacitey to fill, and he might get a crack at right wing on one of their top two lines, too.
Donato wasn’t seen as a center by the Bruins. If so, he’d have been given the same chance to fill the departed Riley Nash’s slot the way fellow rookie Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson, Sean Kuraly, Joakim Nordstrom, and most recently first-year pro Trent Frederic were given, and that didn’t happen. The Bruins, for obvious reasons (excellent offensive instincts and a truly lethal shot) saw Donato as a Top 6 winger, but the promise and progress he showed in his first dozen games last season (five goals, nine points) stalled this year. He did score six goals (three on power plays) and nine points over 34 games in Boston, but his minus-11 rating on one of the best defensive teams in the league was troublesome, and difficulties in puck management and board battles were enough for the B’s to assign him to AHL Providence not once, but twice. He was a P-Bruin when the trade was announced on Wednesday.
As with all trades, it’ll take time to reach a final verdict on this one -- although, unlike so many other deadline deals (think of the B’s renting Rick Nash last year), this one doesn’t call for a snap judgment. The Bruins have Coyle through this season into next, a long enough period to see where he might fit best -- or, if they decide there is no best fit, he could become trade collateral in a year, as he approaches unrestricted free agency.
Donato has development time on his side, while Coyle is essentially a finished product. Coyle’s numbers are down over the last two years (10 goals, 28 points in 60 games this season, 11-26--37 in 66 games last year), but he has scored as many as 21 goals (2015-16) and 56 points (‘16-17), plus power play and penalty kill time on his resume.
The Bruins are going to the playoffs, despite identifiable holes in their lineup that Coyle is capable of filling. The B’s don’t think Donato can -- at least, not now.
Good trade today. Second-guessing, as always, to come.