A lifetime of work for instant celebrity: with little fanfare until this season, the Coyotes' captain has emerged into one of the NHL's elite players

Hockey Digest, May-June, 2004 by Chris Dolack

SHANE DOAN USED TO BE ONE of the best players in the NHL that no one knew. Not anymore. He's still putting up impressive statistics, but now he seems to be everywhere from Phoenix to St. Paul, Minn., where he played in his first NHL All-Star Game in February. Whether it's magazines, newspapers, or the Internet, Doan has become somewhat of a hockey celebrity.

The latest captain of the Coyotes, Doan has quietly emerged into one of the league's elite players while skating for a team that has struggled to become a Western Conference contender. The Winnipeg Jets made Doan the seventh overall pick in the 1995 NHL Entry Draft after he recorded 94 points for the Kamloops Blazers in British Columbia. It took a few seasons to adjust to the NHL, but now he is a leader on and off the ice.

Growing up in an Alberta farm town, Doan was just as comfortable riding a horse as he was playing hockey. He can recall nearly everything about the Edmonton Oilers' Stanley Cup championship teams in the 1980s as well as name captains from any team. So it was only a matter of time before hockey would become his career. After all, his father, Bernie, was a 1971 draft pick of the St. Louis Blues and helped to steer him into professional hockey.

But even with his newfound star status, Doan, 27, still has to fight for best athlete honors at the family dinner table. His sister, Leighann, is a star with the Canadian National Women's Basketball Team and was Canada's 2001 Female Athlete of the Year.

Through it all, Doan, a right winger, appears to be amazed by all the attention thrust his way. He took time out of his hectic schedule to talk with HOCKEY DIGEST:

HD: Do you believe you are the same on and off the ice?

SD: [Laughing]. Definitely. I think on the ice it's a different type of mentality. It's difficult to explain. It's something that you want to win and you're a competitive person and when you get on the ice you want to do whatever it takes to win. You want to beat whoever you can. Off the ice ... Mike Sullivan, my roommate, was adamant about being a gentleman off the ice, same with my dad.

HD: How have you managed to stay with one franchise your whole career?

SD: I've been very fortunate. The fact that the organization has stuck with me for a long time, especially in the beginning when I didn't really do very much, they stuck with me for a long time. It's been a few different groups of people and I've been fortunate I've been able to stick here and enjoy the time here and see this team change and be a part of everything.

HD: You were drafted seventh overall, did you put a lot of pressure on yourself?.

SD: As a player, you always expect to succeed. If you don't, then you're in trouble. Obviously, it was pretty discouraging in the first four years of my career. I think I had 20 goals or something. I was averaging something like five points a year. It was tough. I was playing a very limited role. I was learning lots. At the time, you don't feel like you are, but it was something where I still expected to succeed. Once I really got an opportunity, I totally expected to make the most of it.

HD: How did things finally click?

SD: I got an opportunity to play with Jeremy Roenick and Keith Tkachuk and we had a fairly good game in Edmonton and followed it up by another fairly good game and I had a few points. Then Jeremy got hurt. He got a broken jaw going into the playoffs so we didn't have a center man. They moved me to center for a few games in the playoffs and I got a couple of game-winning goals. The confidence from that carried on to the next year. The beginning of the next year, I was put together with [left wing] Mika Alatalo and [center] Juha Ylonen and we really kind of meshed together. I really enjoyed playing with them. When the game is fun and enjoyable it's a lot easier to play. Those two created a lot of offense and they gave me a lot of opportunities to shoot the puck because they both worked so hard and passed the puck so well and I got some goals. There're so many players in the league that if they just got the opportunity they could create so much more. It's such a tight league that you don't always get those opportunities.

HD: Do you feel you've been overlooked in recent seasons?

SD: Oh no, not at all We haven't done very much as an organization. I think success as a team is what drives success as a player. If we had won a couple rounds of playoffs or even made the playoffs a couple of times instead of missing them two of the past three years, then there might be a little more recognition. But as long as the team doesn't have the success that we're hoping we can have, then the recognition is not really expected.

HD: So individual goals are below the team's?

SD: That sounds really cheesy, but ... Coming out of juniors, I had such an unbelievable team and we won so much that you might think, 'I got to have a good year.' You expect to win and so you want to have a good individual year. And then playing for nine years in the NHL and never making it out of the first round of the playoffs and never really creating that much you start to realize how important it is. I remember when guys would come in and they would be saying, 'It goes by quickly.' I'm just blown away at how quick it goes by. Watching the playoffs and seeing the teams and seeing how fun that is and how enjoyable that is for guys and the emotion that goes into that, that's what it's all about. To never really experience that, you kind of feel like you've missed out. If you can make the playoffs and create like Anaheim and Minnesota did last year, create a pretty big stir, those guys will never forget that. That's where the real excitement of the game is.