Shane Doan Jersey Card

From all the times I've featured him, you'd think Shane Doan was one of my  favourite players, and while I can appreciate his being one of the best players to ever suit up for the Phoenix / Arizona Coyotes, that's about as far as I take it, but I keep pulling his cards in the boxes I open, year in and year out; sometimes I can trade them, but this one goes for well under $5 on Ebay, so I figure if someone was actually interested in obtaining it, they wouldn't have to give anything away and could probably find it at a buck or two somewhere and combine shipping for extra jersey cards, instead of having to get rid of a card to acquire it.

Still, I'll take this 2013-14 Series 2 card from Upper Deck (#GJ-SD of the Game Jersey sub-set) and place it in my binder with other Doan cards, if only so I can feature a member of the Coyotes as they've defeated dominated the Montréal Canadiens this afternoon:

It shows Doan wearing the Coyotes' white (away) uniform, the captain's 'C' very visible on his chest, with a game-worn burgundy jersey swatch inserted in it.

Arizona is having an awful year, and much of the blame has been placed on goalie Mike Smith's sub-par play (an 8-21-4 record, 3.49 GAA and .888 is very unbecoming of an NHL starter, let alone one making nearly $6M per season), forcing the team to trade away backup Devan Dubnyk who was outplaying him enough to create a goalie controversy, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Their leading scorer - Keith Yandle - is a defenseman who has 34 points in 50 games, and no one on the team has reached the 15-goal mark, 60% deep into the season. Doan's 27 points rank him fourth on the team, at 38 years old.

No player who has suited up for 20 games or more has a positive +/-, and only two of their top-10 scorers have a better than minus-10 rating.

The way they're built, they were always made to contend for the top draft pick; they clearly have less talent than the Edmonton Oilers (perennial underachievers) and Buffalo Sabres (totally rebuilding with a line-up of 20-year-olds and low-scoring veterans), probably on par with that of the Carolina Hurricanes, who might have a better offense on the first line but not Arizona's top-two defenders (Yandle and Oliver Ekman-Larsson), so it evens out. Except that the Canes' goalie, Cam Ward, is actually (mostly) stopping pucks from going in.

They're clearly sellers at the deadline, with Yandle, Zbynek Michalek and Antoine Vermette the most likely candidates to be traded; Doan, with a no-movement clause to his contract and no will to win a Stanley Cup on a contending team, should stay put.