The Arizona Coyotes owe a lot to Captain Shane Doan. That doesn’t change the fact that the team and the fans need one more favor from #19.
He’s played 20 seasons with the Arizona Coyotes franchise. He’s written his name all over the record book.
He’s been there through the good, very bad, and the worse. He has provided a ray of light to a fan base that has often been cast in darkness.
After all of that, Shane Doan owes the franchise and it’s fan base nothing.
Not another hard backcheck. Not another twenty goal season. Not another signature on a puck.
Not even a Stanley Cup championship.
The Arizona Coyotes franchise may be owned by IceArizona, but make no mistake, Doan has the keys to the front door, the side entrance, and every single fan’s heart in the stands.
More from Coyotes News
- How the Arizona Coyotes could line-up with Logan Cooley signed
- Report: Logan Cooley could be closer to signing Arizona Coyotes ELC
- Arizona Coyotes sign Matias Maccelli to three-year deal
- Ivan Prosvetov signs one-year deal with Arizona Coyotes
- Arizona Coyotes cut Galchenyuk after reported police incident
When professional sports fans and analysts talk about leadership, it often boils down to “this man/woman led their team to a championship”. Sure, there’s the bit about being good in the community or loved in the locker room, but the real traits that make a good leader in any walk of life are overshadowed by wins and losses in professional sports.
Shane Doan hasn’t just led the twenty guys who take the ice every night, however. He’s led an entire franchise.
From the top of the organization to bottom, Doan’s loyalty and steady hand have kept a franchise that has seen it’s share of struggles firmly in an area that was deemed by outsiders unfit to have such a gift.
As ownership changed hands, faces came and went, and rumors swirled like so much sand in the desert, #19 kept coming to work.
Day after day. Year after year.
It seems folly to ask a man who has given so much to a fan base for one more thing, but it’s an important one.
Shane Doan needs to let us say goodbye.
Whether it’s at the end of 2016-17, or even several years from now, this team cannot allow it’s greatest player – it’s greatest asset – to walk away without a send-off befitting a man who has been the bedrock of this franchise.
Shane Doan deserves every second of every ovation he’ll receive. Every chant. Every tear.
Doan is likely too modest to voluntarily agree to such a thing, but ownership and General Manager John Chayka need to sit down with the man when the time nears so that the moment does not pass unheralded.
The front office needs to ensure that the fan base doesn’t find out Doan has skated for the last time the same way the Spurs fans found out about Tim Duncan’s retirement.
Hockey is about heroes.
Those players who go above and beyond.
They excite us, they entertain us.
For those 60 minutes a night, 82-plus games a year, we can forget about our troubles and wrap ourselves up in possibility.
#19 will hang in the rafters at Gila River Arena or wherever the Arizona Coyotes end up.
That’s a fact.
Next: Mike Smith's 10 Best Saves As A Coyote
When the banner goes up on that day, however, Arizona Coyotes fans shouldn’t be saying goodbye to Shane Doan.
They should be saying hello again because the goodbye was already given.