At just about a month away from the action in the hockey world picking up again, the opening of this next season for the Phantoms looms large. A team that saw some piecemeal improvements made in their first year under their new coaching staff and some key prospects graduated upwards, there remains some lingering disappointment over how the season went — or didn’t go, into the playoffs — and a large sense of unfinished business needed to be tended to.
There’s a lot left to be accomplished for the team on a collective level, and much of whether they hit their next marks will depend on how well the large group of prospects in their mix fares in this season. The team is laden with key young players who are all but expected to take the next step forward and lead the team towards their next step forward, and one such player is undoubtedly third-year defenseman Hunter McDonald.
How did his 2025-26 season go?
McDonald’s last season was, on the whole, a little uneven. The early goings of the season were, to say the least, a bit challenging for him — his first season saw him working through some pretty major growing pains, and while he showed some promising signs of improvement throughout that year, they were ultimately quite stilted, and unfortunately a completely polished and steady game did not suddenly snap into place for him over one single offseason. That is, McDonald came in for his second season last fall still apparently working through some of the same big issues, namely in struggles with positioning in the defensive zone, and in continuing too often to be pulled over the line of discipline and goaded into taking a needless penalty after the whistle and putting his team at a disadvantage.
It was a tough look, no other way about it, for a prospect who had been so highly touted by certain members of the management group, and for whom hopes were so high. There was a sense, for a bit there, that his development track was at risk of being well and truly derailed if something didn’t give. And, just before the midseason point and just in time, things started to shift for him.
It was a well-timed realignment, as well, as the Phantoms lost Ty Murchison to injury in early January, and suddenly quite desperately needed someone to step up on the back end and offer more in the way of willingness to block shots and offer something of an uncomplicated stay-at-home defensive presence. And though his play wasn’t perfect, and there were a few big mistakes mixed in through the back half of the season, his game by and large reached a new level, and he was able to deliver a consistency in defensive steadiness which was, to be frank, largely absent in the rest of the Phantoms’ defense group. It’s a testament to the work that the coaching staff put in with him to settle down those undisciplined points and refocus his game to something more consistent and less volatile, and his willingness to take those points to heart towards building a better professional game.
What are we hoping to see from him this season?
While he certainly did well to improve the steadiness of his game from where it was to start the season, there’s still another level left to tap into in his game. This past season saw him take a step back in terms of offensive production (from four goals and 14 points in his rookie year to zero goals and six points last year), and while that seemed to be something of a necessary compromise — his moments of activating offensively were quite reined in, as just about all energy was focused on stabilizing his game at the other end of the ice — his instincts will not have gone away entirely, and it would be nice to see him stepping up as an option again at times, as he learns how to mitigate some of the risk in those situations.
The biggest thing, though, that we’d need to see from McDonald this season is consistency, particularly as the competition for minutes presumably heats up. That is, he had some positive stretches in his first season, and his second half of the last season was quite strong, but we’ve yet to see him string together one full season where he’s able to keep his game together and productive. We’re not necessarily asking for perfection here — that would be a hard thing to expect from anyone on a completely night in and night out basis — but building more consistency would go a long way towards, certainly, improving the collective level of team defense done, but also proving his readiness for a longer look up with the big club, whenever the opportunity might arise.
What kind of role do we expect him to play?
McDonald’s role in the lineup — particularly at even strength — won’t be handed to him, with all of the depth the team is now working with on the left side (with a healthy Ty Murchison back in the mix and the addition of the more veteran Cam Dineen), but he’ll certainly be in the mix in that open competition for a top role on this team. And along with this, between the work that he did through the end of the season to even out his game and continue to rebuild his stock with the coaching staff, and the chemistry he showed playing alongside Oliver Bonk (who’s all but certain to see a large and meaningful usage to build on his strong first season), his case to regain a top role in this next season is quite strong.
Much will depend on how things shake out in training camp and these first couple of weeks of the season, how all of the pieces of this defense group — both new and returning — all fit together in practice, but McDonald was able to step up as a largely reliable option in heavy minutes when called upon last season, and there’s no reason to think he couldn’t keep that rolling into this year, if called upon again.
