NHL Playoffs 2012: Desperation Pays Dividends for Shane Doan, Phoenix Coyotes

Even before he single-handedly sculpted a 2-0 advantage that would soon morph into a season-saving victory for the Phoenix Coyotes, Shane Doan set the tone for the day by preventing an early Los Angeles Kings icebreaker.

Sunday’s Game 4 of the Western Conference finals was only 75 seconds old when Doan watched his fellow Phoenix veteran, Ray Whitney, go to the sin bin for roughing.

Not only was the eldest member of the Coyotes taking a penalty in the wee phases of an elimination game, he was doing so by letting a Los Angeles rookie—Slava Voynov, who started this season with AHL Manchester—get the better of his emotions during a routine scrum along the boards.

If the Coyotes wanted any odds-defying shot at reversing the course of this series, they needed a reversal to the course of Sunday’s game without fail.

Enter Captain Doan, who would place fourth on the team with 22 minutes and 35 seconds of ice time on the day. The Kings would manage four attempted shots on their first power play, including two on net, but Doan also managed to get his stick on two traveling pucks before clearing the zone.

Owing at least partial credit to that, but no small sum of it, the Coyotes went unscathed through a short-handed segment that saw no stoppages of play.

The remainder of the opening stanza was fairly whistle-heavy, at least in the sense that five additional penalties and three more power plays were doled out.

The last of those worked in Phoenix’s favor. Only 25 seconds into Justin Williams’ two-minute sentence for interfering with goaltender Mike Smith, L.A. counterpart Jonathan Quick gave the puck away from behind the net.

The turnover equaled a chance for Whitney to redress himself and for Doan to take the upper hand for his team. Still stationed along the goal line, Doan accepted Whitney’s forward pass and proceeded to spoon a backhander home to the right of Quick for the icebreaker at the 14:19 mark of the opening period.

One game and nearly three full days after he had perhaps flexed excess physicality with 11 hits in Game 3, Doan charged up a much more balanced line on Sunday. He tied teammate Derek Morris and L.A.’s Trevor Lewis with five body-checks and also issued five attempted shots, putting three on net.

One of those that missed constituted another reasonable scoring threat at 8:41 of the second period. Carrying the puck up the far alley onto Quick’s property, Doan would see his shot deflected out of play by backchecker Rob Scuderi.

But two shifts later, Scuderi had the misfortune of helping Doan’s second unanswered goal find its way into the top shelf.

At the 11:10 mark of the middle frame, Doan collected the remnants of linemate Antoine Vermette’s face-off win and slugged it in from above the dot, almost the same position where he had released his previous attempt.

With the second goal, Doan is now tied with Vermette—who was Sunday’s best face-off man on either side with 12 wins on 18 tries—for the team lead with five postseason goals.

With the assist, Vermette has his first point of the conference finals, and the Coyotes are now 8-0 in these playoffs when the center appears on the score sheet.

A veteran of 53 Stanley Cup playoff games, including all 47 during the Coyotes’ tenure in Phoenix, Doan’s icebreaker held up as his fourth career game-winner in postseason action. It improved his team to 4-8 all time when facing elimination and 2-2 in that situation during his nine-year captaincy.

In a spring stocked with firsts, Doan merged the two scenarios for the first time, tallying the decider and the insurance to stave off elimination. With that, he tangibly and intangibly helped his team prolong what is already the most head-turning run in his 17-year tenure with the Winnipeg/Phoenix franchise.