Doan remains likely to officially sign four year deal worth just north of $21 million with Coyotes in a few days

A steep price for a soon to be 36 year old, Shane Doan has reached an agreement with the Phoenix Coyotes on a four year deal worth just north of $21 million. The deal will carry a cap hit in excess of $5 million per season. Now it’s a waiting game this week to see if Doan ends up officially signing the deal.

Doan has maintained he will sign before the CBA expires on September 15th and Doan hopes to officially sign the deal in a few days with Phoenix, assuming the Coyotes never ending sale to Greg Jamison remains on the right track. Jamison has brought on additional investors to come up with the money to secure the sale and according to NHL officials, the league is still pushing forward with the sale Jamison. When reached for comment, one NHL official though had doubt that the sale to Jamison would be official before September 15th with the vibe from NHL officials that it might not be completed until later in the month.

 According to a source, the Coyotes initially were only willing to go three years but Doan’s agent Terry Bross set the stage in talks to command a four year deal from the get go for his client.

Doan received multiple four year offers from interested teams with two of the biggest offers coming from small market teams in the Nashville Predators and Buffalo Sabres. The Sabres in mid-July made a staggering 4 year, $30 million offer but Doan showed little interest in playing for Buffalo.

After making Doan’s four team shortlist, Inside Pittsburgh Sports has learned that Doan is no longer considering the Pittsburgh Penguins as an alternative option and Doan’s final two teams outside of Phoenix has ended up being the New York Rangers and Vancouver Canucks, two of the top front runners for weeks.

The belief in league circles this summer had been that the New York Rangers emerged as Doan’s clear No. 2 option after Phoenix due to their status as a Cup contender and his familiarity with the Rangers coaching staff and while that may still be the case, there is growing momentum that Doan will be a Vancouver Canuck if Doan gets some bad news this week on the Coyotes sale to Jamison. Other teams that showed strong interest in Doan this summer included the Los Angeles Kings, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, and Philadelphia Flyers.

With few options out there all summer, the Penguins are going to end up being 0-for-2 this summer in their search of a top-6 forward in free agency after losing out on Zach Parise when the Penguins offered Parise a 12 year deal worth just over $85 million in July.

With nothing cooking on the trade front, Penguin officials fully expect to go into the season with their current roster (whenever that begins).

It’s going to setup a training camp with likely a lot of experimenting from head coach Dan Bylsma in the top-6. The obvious name to move up the depth chart is Tyler Kennedy but once the regular season comes, Bylsma almost always seems against moving Kennedy up to a second line role. We’ll see if that changes with the Penguins scoring depth not as strong as previous seasons.

With there believed to be intrigue of a big line in Eric Tangradi – Evgeni Malkin – James Neal, Tangradi is likely to get some looks in training camp with those two, while one player who could fly under the radar in camp is Dustin Jeffrey.