Roberts: Coyotes' treatment of Shane Doan is shameful -- and telling Laurie Roberts: It took nine whole minutes for Coyotes owner Andrew Barroway to fire a guy who has long been the face and the heart of the team.

Laurie Roberts | The Republic | azcentral.com

Show Caption Hide Caption Coyotes part ways with Shane Doan Coyotes captain Shane Doan will not return to the team.

Turns out there is something besides a Stanley Cup that the Arizona Coyotes don’t have.

A clue, that is.

The owners of Arizona’s hockey team have once again demonstrated that they can’t buy one of those any more than they can buy themselves a golden ticket to the playoffs.

How else could team owner Andrew Barroway, who recently bought out his partners to become the team's sole owner, possibly fire his most valuable star -- a guy revered both for his decency off the ice and his loyalty on it?

Doan stayed because it meant something

Shane Doan could have skated off in search of greater hockey glory any number of times.

Yet he stayed in Arizona through the off-ice trials and tribulations that have been a hallmark of this team since it arrived from Winnipeg two decades ago.

Stayed even though he could have made millions more by signing with better teams that would have loved to have No. 19 in their lineup.

Stayed because loyalty meant something to the guy.

At a time when professional sports seems filled with prima donnas and poor role models, the Coyotes had Doan.

Doan picked up the tab, time and again

Maybe Mr. Barroway never heard what happened in 2004-05, when the NHL had a work stoppage and the team cut health insurance benefits for its training and equipment staff.

Shane Doan heard about it. Then he quietly picked up the tab.

"As a dad, you understand the stress (that) would bring to a family. And I couldn't let that happen," he would later say.

BICKLEY: Time to say 'thank you' to Shane Doan

I’m thinking 21. As in 21 seasons he stayed with this franchise, one of just nine players in NHL history to exhibit that level of loyalty to a city and to a team.

I’m thinking 14. As in the number of seasons he’s been captain and the face and the heart of this team.

I’m thinking 9. As in the number of minutes it took to fire him over breakfast at Scottsdale’s First Watch.

Dumped for younger guys? Really?

“The time has come for us to move on and to focus on our young, talented group of players and our very bright future,” Barroway said in a statement.

Seriously, Mr. Barroway?

Like most of Arizona, I’m not a big hockey fan. But I could become one. I caught my son’s love of the Nashville Predators during their run for the Stanley Cup this year.

I don’t know a deke from a dangle.

But I know who Shane Doan is, and I know that you don’t build a relationship with a city by so callously dumping a guy who surely deserved better.

Why wouldn't the team bail on us, too?

The Coyotes owners have spent the last few years trying to coax us into building them yet another hockey arena. They felt cheated by Glendale’s leaders and had no qualms about skating out of town, leaving that city’s taxpayers still on the hook for $145 million on a 13-year-old hockey arena.

Earlier this year, desperate for another swipe into the public’s pocket, the team and the NHL issued the state of Arizona an ultimatum.

Give us a new hockey arena, they said, or we’ll leave.

There is talk the team could wind up in a new joint-use arena with the Phoenix Suns. There is talk the Salt River Pima-Maricopa community might build them new digs. And yes, there is talk that the team will leave.

Me? I'm thinking our leaders should think loooonng and hard before putting up so much as a dime, given this team owner.

Barroway bailed on the team’s most loyal, most high-profile and probably most decent player, refusing to give him one more year and the goodbye-tour he surely deserved.

What makes you think he won’t bail on the rest of us?

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