Former Coyotes share favorite memories of Shane Doan

Two days out from Shane Doan having his No. 19 hung up in the rafters at Gila River Arena, some of his former teammates took a moment to share their favorite memories of the former Coyotes captain.

From players that played in Doan’s days like Jeremy Roenick and Keith Tkachuk to more recent Coyotes like Antoine Vermette and Mike Smith, 10 different former teammates of Doan joined Doug & Wolf on Friday on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.

Here’s what they had to say:

Adrian Aucoin: Teammate from 2009-12

“Besides that he always like to eat too much, I mean — that was one thing. I’m surprised he’s not like 300 pounds now. But that’s pretty — that’s impressive in itself. I would say actually his competitiveness, because when you talk about Shane Doan, you always hear how he’s the nicest guy, he’s a great person and he helps everybody out.

“But his competitiveness is off the charts, whether it’s an argument with his buddies, whether it’s on the ice, whether he’s working out.”

Antoine Vermette: Teammate from 2011-16

“There’s one thing that strikes me when I look back when we played together. We were — I literally spent more time with him than with my wife at the time. I remember coming back at home and for some reason, I don’t know how we did it, we just started talking after practices, after games. And a few times, Stan [Wilson], the head equipment manager, had to kick us out of the rink.

“My wife, I played on a different team before, and she thought it was a little unusual. And she was asking me: ‘Why are you being so late?’ You know, like, ‘Oh, I’m just hanging out at the rink with Shane.’ And somehow we just [lose] track of time, time flew by. With that, I certainly lost my home-cooked lunch privilege. From that moment, she’s like ‘I’m giving up, you’re on your own now.’ That’s for sure.”

Brad May: Teammate from 2000-03

“For me, playing with Shane for a few years, when we used to play at America West Arena, Shane — you can’t really pick on this guy. The only thing I can honestly say, he doesn’t swear. And when he’d be on the bench and he would do something, miss the net or you know — make anything up on the ice.

“I remember one day he was on the bench and he wanted to say the F-word, and he was like, ‘Agh!’ and you just knew it. You knew it wanted to come out. It was like so forceful. And he goes, ‘Agh! Fuddle duddle!’ And I looked at him on the bench and I’m like, ‘What the heck is that?’ We laughed. You know what? Shane’s right. It’s a lack of intelligence if you swear. There’s better words to replace, obviously, swear words. It’s also discipline not to use them.”

Dallas Drake: Teammate from 1995-2000

“He’s a guy that, in maybe a season or an era a few years back, he’d be considered a hall of famer in a lot of people’s minds. He scored, he played hard, he could drop the gloves and beat you up when he wanted to do it. So he was the complete package. He played in a number of different eras of this hockey that we’ve gone through from a defensive to an offensive type system game, and he excelled at every one of those eras.”

Jeremy Roenick: Teammate from 1996-2001

“I do remember when he was a kid coming and he was like that wide-eyed, bushy-tailed kid that couldn’t believe he was in the locker room, in a professional locker room with guys like Craig Janney, myself, Teppo Numminen. He was like, everywhere we went, everything that we did, Shane Doan was right there and just soaking everything in. ‘Hey Shane, you want to do this?’ ‘Yeah, sure. Let’s go do this.’ ‘Hey Shane, you want to go to dinner here?’ ‘Yeah, sounds great.’

“There was never, ever a ‘no’ with Shane. And I think that’s what made him such a special guy.”

Keith Tkachuk: Teammate from 1995-2001

“He’s just that perfect human being. Like, he really was a goofy kind of kid when he first came in as an 18-year-old in Winnipeg, when we were playing up there. He just blended in really, really nice. You could just tell he came from a great family. I don’t think you could find a crazy story about Shane, because he just came to the rink and he never put himself in a situation where he did anything that would affect him or the team.”

Kris King: Teammate from 1995-97

“Doaner, we had our rookie meal one night and we had three rookies. And we had Doaner doing some things that probably, we probably regret and wouldn’t do today. But he handled it very, very well, so-to-speak. And again, as a senior person in the hockey league, I’ll leave it at, if we had cell phones in those times there’d be different conversations about Shane Doan as a young guy than we have it now. We’d be able to prove a few things in those old days. But he wasn’t an angel, let’s just say that.”

Mike Smith: Teammate from 2011-17

“I don’t think many people know this, but Doaner and I had multiple almost-fist-fights before we played with the Coyotes. Just because him and I are so much alike as far as our competitive spirits.

“He didn’t like to lose, and I didn’t like to lose and it ended up sometimes being, getting pretty intense before games playing two-touch soccer. So, I think we’ve been nose-to-nose a couple times, but I think that got the juices flowing. Our teammates thought we were nuts. But, in the end we could hug each other three minutes later and be best of buddies and go out on the ice and go to battle with each other.”

Ray Whitney: Teammate from 2010-12

“It was his hat trick goal when time expired.

“He’d been on the ice for two and a half minutes. Two and a half minutes in hockey time is extremely long time. It’d be like sprinting, basically, for two minutes straight and your legs would just be full and full, to where you can’t even bend them. So, Dave Tippett throws me out there in the last 15 seconds. As I’m coming into the zone, they turn the puck over and Shane is going to give up on his hat trick goal. That’s it, he’s been out there for two minutes already, he can’t move his legs. I do a tight turn, I look at him, he’s going to start heading off the bench, and I give him a yell, I said, ‘Let’s go!’

“He looks at me, he goes, ‘Okay, one last time.’ You could see the big old bison was just barely getting up the ice at the time. I don’t know how he had the strength when we cut across the blue line and I passed it over, and he was able to get the shot off. … How he managed to get the strength to shoot it from that far out and still score was pretty impressive.”

Sean Burke: Teammate from 1999-2004

“My funniest memory is fighting him in practice. I mean, him and I were obviously very good teammates and close, but both competitive and that’s the one thing I always remember about Doaner is he’s an extremely competitive guy. And even in practice, he wanted to score every chance he got, he wanted to be the best he could be, and sometimes in a sport like hockey that gets a little competitive out there, he wasn’t always nice, joking.”

Follow @AZSports