NHL Playoffs 2012: Coyotes' Postgame Behavior Shouldn't Taint Their Season

There are three options as to how one will remember the 2011-12 Phoenix Coyotes. It will either be the way they finished the regular season, how they finished the playoffs or the hasty, heated epilogue some of them tacked on after the fact.

Realistically, it will be a blend predominated by the first two items. Phoenix fans can hope for nothing less.

Less than 55 hours after they valiantly prolonged their playoff run and averted a sweep at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings, team captain Shane Doan and celestial goaltender Mike Smith reeked of bitterness after an overtime loss shut their door in Game 5.

Both men were incensed about a non-call on Kings captain Dustin Brown, who injured Michal Rozsival in a collision along the L.A. blue line moments before Dustin Penner buried Tuesday night’s decider.

Doan and Smith both incurred game misconducts for their on-ice reactions to the goal and did not appear to mince words in the subsequent handshake or in their postgame pressers.

Penner ended a 4-3 victory for Los Angeles that began as a 1-0 and 2-1 upper hand for the desperate Coyotes. It would not be a stretch to say that Phoenix’s effort was even more admirable in their Game 5 shortcoming than their 2-0 Game 4 victory.

But that did nothing to shield their palates from the vinegary flavor of the final outcome. After all, had Brown been penalized, it would have happened at 17:30 of sudden death.

Instead, 12 seconds after the next faceoff, an even-strength goal put the series in the morgue.

Smith, who engaged Jonathan Quick in a spotless staring contest from the start of the third period to the 17:42 mark of overtime, went so far as to say that Brown “should be done forever.”

The frustration expressed therein is wholly understandable. But Smith’s remark, more than any other postgame utterance, was wholly irrational, and the not-so-cordial handshake line cast a cloud on one of hockey’s distinctive traditions.

For Doan, who has been with this franchise for 17 years, this was hardly the ideal way to close out his only NHL playoff run to feature a single playoff series victory, let alone two. Nor is it any savory way to walk out in the increasingly unlikely event that the Coyotes are playing somewhere other than Arizona next season.

But on that note, even though this is sour syrup on the sundae, there is only a relative drizzle of it when you look at the full scope of the 2011-12 season.

As a rookie, Doan lived through the process of bidding adieu to one fanbase in Winnipeg and joining an uprooted franchise. In recent years, he and his current Coyotes teammates have lived through the persistent discussions of another potential relocation. And in between, he never played more than seven playoff games in a single season.

Only this spring did Phoenix find fulfillment in the form of a six-game triumph over Chicago, followed by a five-game victory against Nashville. And both the deciding win over the Predators and the season-ending loss to L.A. competed for air time with various announcements concerning the progress in the effort to extend the team’s stay at Jobing.com Arena.

And this was after the Coyotes’ postseason participation appeared impossible as recently as three months ago. They crammed for a 22-7-5 finish en route to the Pacific Division title, backstopped primarily by Smith, who came from Tampa Bay in the offseason and turned in a career year in his first full season as an NHL starter.

Smith carried that fresh momentum over to a solid 8-3 run through the first two rounds, complete with four overtime victories and a pair of shutouts. The Kings just happened to overwhelm him with 202 shots on goal, pumping 13 home.

Smith lost his composure on multiple occasions in the conference final, as evidenced by his Game 1 roughing minor, his Game 2 slash on Brown and his verbal slash on Brown after Game 5.

At the same time, Smith allowed six goals in the last three-plus games after authorizing seven in the first two. He finished the series with a 2.45 goals-against average and .936 save percentage. In the playoffs as a whole, he retained a 1.99 GAA and .944 save percentage.

And in the first of two times his team stared elimination in the eye, he pitched a shutout while Doan single-handedly outscored the Kings. That, along with the 78-minute tangle on Tuesday, was certainly sufficient to salvage the luster of one of the league’s best feel-good stories of the year.

For that matter, so was the implicit graciousness that every Coyote showed to Quick and to Los Angeles coach Darryl Sutter. So, too, was their valedictory stick salute to the crowd, even though a portion of it reprehensibly littered the ice with garbage.

There was no need for Doan and Smith to say at least some of what they said to and in reference to Brown. But just the same, there is no cause to take their remarks out of proportion.