Doan Ready to Go Again

One more year!  One more year!  One more year!

It shouldn't be unexpected that Shane Doan was going to come back for another season with the Arizona Coyotes, but it was fun to think that he could have found his way to a contending team and celebrated his 40th birthday in new colours, representing hope of a championship.  Just a thought.

We awoke on Tuesday morning to see that Doan had re-signed with the Coyotes, accepting a deal that could pay him upwards of $5 million after all of his incentive bonuses on his 35+ contract.  I suppose that would be enough reasons to come back and nearly complete (if not sew up) your career with one franchise, a rare feat these days.

The Coyotes were still getting very reasonable production out of their captain, as he was still able to register 28 goals and 47 points in 72 games with the club, which should have him considered as a 30-goal scorer these days.  This was actually an improvement on his 2015 season, where he only finished with 36 points in 79 games, so there was definitely a push of enthusiasm in his game, likely thanks to all of those fresh new faces in the lineup.

The lineup for the dogs in the desert is going to look a fair bit different again in the 2017 season and hopefully that will keep the youthful enthusiasm alive for their captain, but if these kids and some of these new faces can assume a bigger role, they may not need to lean on him nearly as much.  I would currently project Doan in the 40-point range, in the better safe than sorry thought process.

The Coyotes, as a whole, have managed their cap situation quite well and have taken on some assets to help other teams moving forward.  Even with Pavel Datsyuk and Chris Pronger on the books for one more season, the projected roster (in colour below) is still coming in $10.8 million below the salary cap ceiling.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Shane Doan	5.000	Oliver Ekman-Larsson	5.500	Mike Smith	5.667
Antoine Vermette	3.750	Alex Goligoski	5.475	Louis Domingue	1.050
Jamie McGinn	3.333	Kevin Connauton	1.000
Martin Hanzal	3.100
Brad Richardson	2.080
Max Domi	0.894
Anthony Duclair	0.773
Ryan White	1.000	Zbynek Michalek	3.200
		Klas Dahlbeck	0.750
Dylan Strome	0.894	Jarred Tinordi	0.700
Brendan Perlini	0.863	Jamie McBain	0.650
Christian Dvorak	0.839
Jordan Martinook	0.613
Craig Cunningham	0.600
Chris Mueller	0.600
Pavel Datsyuk	7.500	Chris Pronger	4.921
Nick Merkley	0.894	Anthony DeAngelo	0.863	Adin Hill	0.726
Henrik Samuelsson	0.894	Kyle Wood	0.718	Marek Langhamer	0.648
Christian Fischer	0.853	Dysin Mayo	0.653	Justin Peters	0.600
Ryan MacInnis	0.798	Justin Hache	0.640
Laurent Dauphin	0.776	Dakota Mermis	0.627
Michael Bunting	0.668
Conor Garland	0.663
Matia Marcantuoni	0.608
Garret Ross	0.600

Pool worthy, non-pool roster players, assumed roster fill-ins,  injured/retired cap hits, in the system