Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Shane Doan nearly retired to stay with his family

2012 NHL Awards - Red Carpet

LAS VEGAS, NV - JUNE 20: Shane Doan of the Phoenix Coyotes arrives with his wife Andrea before the 2012 NHL Awards at the Encore Theater at the Wynn Las Vegas on June 20, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Getty Images

While fans waited out to see where Shane Doan would sign before the lockout, be it Phoenix or Vancouver, one thing we didn’t know until now is he contemplated retiring from the game.

Sarah McLellan of the Arizona Republic shares the story of how Doan nearly hung it up to take care of his family after his 7 year-old daughter, Karys, had the scare of a lifetime.

In early July, Karys suffered a severe dog bite to her face at her grandparents’ ranch in Alberta that required bone and cartilage reconstruction and 150 stitches. She had to spend six days in the hospital after being operated on.

“This changed everything for me, and I wasn’t interested in thinking about making any decisions for the next little while,” Doan said.

After spending weeks at the family’s secluded camp in Kamloops to recover and get back to normal, he returned to Arizona to start figuring out his future. There potential Coyotes owner Greg Jamison convinced him he’d get the deal done to buy the team and that turned into a four-year, $21.2 million contract signed just before the lockout started.

Doan stayed in Phoenix because of his family, but it was the love his family that nearly made him walk away from it all.