Shane Doan knows what his friend and former junior teammate Jarome Iginla will endure Friday during the NHL Draft in Las Vegas.
Doan spent his entire NHL playing career with the same franchise. After one season in Winnipeg, he moved with the team to Arizona and remained there until 2017. Doan’s name can be found all over the Coyotes’ record book and, in January 2021, he joined their front office months before that year’s draft, which included his son Josh as a prospect.
It’s one thing for a former NHL player to watch his son get drafted. Another is to work for the NHL team that is actively searching for your son.
“No one has a say in who drafted you or what happened to you, you shouldn’t do that to anyone but yourself,” Doan told The Athletic. “So my wife and I said, ‘You know what? What happens, happens.'”
Tij Iginla is a projected first-round pick with some mock drafts placing him among the top 10 players, possibly being selected at No. 9 by the Calgary Flames, the team where his father became a legend. And Tij is not the only descendant of a former player available to be chosen this weekend. Ryder Ritchie, son of former NHL player Byron, has also been classified as a first-rounder. Saku Koivu’s son Aatos and Miroslav Satan’s son Miro Jr. are also among them.
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Iginla joined the Flames front office last summer as a special adviser to general manager Craig Conroy. Flames scouting director Tod Button admitted it was difficult to be objective with Tij, but scouts were told to treat him like any other player. According to Button, Iginla would excuse himself from meetings whenever the Flames discussed his son, but was given access to the team’s scouting reports on him.
The Flames have two first-round picks on Friday, but Iginla won’t be in the draft room with Calgary’s staff. According to Conroy, during an interview with the Flames BarnBurner podcast, Iginla will be in the stands with his son while he waits for his moment.
“We haven’t even talked about it,” Doan said. “I think I told him how good his son is and that he’s amazing. But he’s got all those guys in Calgary with (Conroy) and him. That’s how they will solve it.”
Doan maintains that he was not involved in the scanning process with his son and that he left the room whenever front office staff spoke about Josh. Doan wasn’t even interested in where his team had ranked him, but he was eventually given the team’s internal list before the draft began.
“It’s not fun to criticize someone’s son,” Doan said. “If you’re going to be honest, all players have flaws. Then you will say, ‘Why doesn’t he make it? Well, that’s why he won’t make it. Well, why would he? That’s why he would make it.’
“Those things are always hard to say when the father is there.”
Kris Draper spent 17 of his 20 NHL seasons with the Detroit Red Wings and became the team’s director of amateur scouting in 2019. The following summer, Draper and his staff selected his son Kienan as their seventh-round pick.
“Our two scouts were talking about Kienan and how he was progressing,” Draper said after the 2020 draft. “Obviously the size, he’s almost 6-2 and 193. He’s a lot bigger than dad. When you start talking about these players, I want to hear our area scouts start talking about names. And the name Kienan came up. “I just felt like he was the right choice for our organization.”
Greg Malone played for the Penguins for seven seasons and was the organization’s chief scout from the early 1990s until 2006. He led the Penguins’ scouting team in 1999, when his son, Ryan, was drafted by Pittsburgh, a selection Greg says he had. Nothing to do with. Like Doan and Iginla, he did not participate in the scouting meetings that discussed his son.
“I didn’t want anyone to sit back and not say anything negative about him,” Malone said. “Because if there was something about his skating ability, or this or that, etc., they could feel free to say it. And he didn’t want them to feel intimidated by sitting there. So I wanted them to have the freedom to speak openly because we wanted to put the best prospect on the board.”
Malone thought the Penguins would take Ryan in the third round of the 1999 draft. But the Penguins gave up veteran goaltender Gilles Meloche and took Sebastien Caron instead. When it was the Penguins’ turn again in the fourth round, Ryan was still available. Malone was ready for Penguins general manager Craig Patrick to announce the pick.
“And he goes, ‘No, that’s your job,’” Malone said. “And I pushed my chair back and said, ‘No, I’m not going to make it.’ And Craig pushed his chair back and said, ‘I’m not going to make it.’”
So who ended the stalemate between Malone and Patrick? None other than Penguins scout and American hockey legend Herb Brooks.
“He says, ‘Give me that thing,’” Malone said. “And he grabbed it and made the announcement for Ryan.”
There was less fighting when the Coyotes had the 37th pick during the 2021 draft. With the Vegas Golden Knights on the clock at age 36, Josh was the No. 2 player left on Arizona’s board, and the Coyotes believed he was a clear possibility of being taken there.
The Golden Knights then traded that pick (which originally belonged to New Jersey) to Detroit for a second- and fourth-round pick. The Red Wings selected defenseman Shai Buium, the player Arizona had ranked one spot ahead of Josh.
“Everyone in the room turned around and looked at me like, oh my God,” Doan said. “Josh is next on our list. We just follow the list. He was next and we ended up taking him. “That was a pretty special moment.”
Josh made his NHL debut with Arizona in 2023-24, appearing in 11 games. But his career will continue in Utah, where he has relocated the franchise. That’s exactly what he went through with his father when the Jets moved to Arizona in 1996.
“Being able to play some games for the Coyotes is something I know he’ll never forget,” Doan said. “Now he can do both, go somewhere else and start his own story, and that excites him.”
(Photo by Shane Doan and Jarome Iginla: Norm Hall/NHLI via /Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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