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 ahead of that year’s draft, which included his son Josh as a prospect.
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It’s one thing for a former NHLer to watch their kid get drafted. It’s another to work for the NHL team that is actively scouting your son.
“No one has a say over who drafted you or what happened with you, you should not do that to anyone but yourself,” Doan told The Athletic. “So, my wife and I kind of were like, ‘You know what? Whatever happens, happens.’”
Tij Iginla is a projected first-round pick with some mock drafts placing him as a top-10 player, possibly being drafted at No. 9 by the Calgary Flames — the team where his father became a legend. And Tij isn’t the only offspring of a former player available to be picked this weekend. Ryder Ritchie, son of former NHLer Byron, has also been tabbed as a first-rounder. Saku Koivu’s son, Aatos, and Miroslav Satan’s son, Miro Jr., are among them, too.
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Iginla joined the Flames front office last summer as a special adviser to GM Craig Conroy. Flames director of scouting Tod Button admitted it was difficult to be objective over Tij but scouts were told to treat him like he was any other player. According to Button, Iginla excused 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 picks in the first round on Friday but Iginla won’t be on the draft floor with Calgary’s staff. According to Conroy, during an interview with the Flames podcast BarnBurner, Iginla will be in the stands with his son as he awaits his moment.
“We haven’t even talked about it,” Doan said. “I think I told him how good his kid is and that he’s unbelievable. But he’s got all those guys in Calgary with (Conroy) and him. So, they’ll have it sorted out.”
Doan maintains he wasn’t involved in the scouting process with his son and would leave the room whenever the front office staff discussed Josh. Doan wasn’t even interested in where his team had him ranked but was eventually given the team’s internal list before the draft began.
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“It’s not fun critiquing someone’s son,” Doan said. “If you’re going to be honest, every single player has warts. So, you’re going to be like ‘Why won’t he make it? Well, this is why he won’t make it. Well, why would he make it? This is why he would make it.’
“Those things are always hard to say when the dad is standing 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.
“Both our scouts were talking about Kienan and how he was progressing,” Draper said after the 2020 draft. “Obviously the size, he’s almost 6-2, weighing in at 193. He’s a lot bigger than Dad. As you start talking about these players, I want to hear our area scouts start talking about names. And Kienan’s name came up. It just felt like it was the right pick for our organization.”
Greg Malone played for the Penguins for seven seasons and was the chief scout for the organization from the early 1990s through 2006. He led the Penguins’ scouting staff in 1999 when his son, Ryan, was drafted by Pittsburgh — a selection Greg says he had nothing to do with. Similarly to Doan and Iginla, he didn’t participate in scouting meetings where his son was discussed.
“I didn’t want anybody just to sit there and not say anything negative about him,” Malone said. “Because if there was something about his skating ability, or this or that and so forth, they could feel free to say. And I didn’t want them intimidated by sitting there. So I wanted them to be free to speak openly because we wanted to get the best prospect up on the board.”
Malone thought the Penguins would take Ryan in the third round of the 1999 draft. But the Penguins deferred to longtime goaltending savant Gilles Meloche and picked Sebastien Caron instead. When the Penguins’ turn came up again in the fourth round, Ryan was still available. Malone was ready for Penguins GM Craig Patrick to announce the pick.
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“And he says ‘No, that’s your job,'” Malone said. “And I pushed my chair back and I said ‘No, I’m not going to make it.’ And Craig pushed his chair back and he says ‘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 held the No. 37 pick during the 2021 draft. With the Vegas Golden Knights on the clock at 36, Josh was the No. 2 player left on Arizona’s board, and the Coyotes believed he was a distinct possibility to be taken there.
Then, the Golden Knights 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.
“Everybody in the room kind of turned and looked at me like, oh my goodness,” Doan said. “Josh is next on our list. We just followed 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, getting into 11 games. But his career will continue in Utah where the franchise has relocated. It’s exactly what happened with his father when the Jets moved to Arizona in 1996.
“Getting to play a few games for the Coyotes is something I know he’ll never forget,” Doan said. “Now he gets to do both where he gets to go somewhere else and start his own story and he’s excited about that.”
(Photo of Shane Doan and Jarome Iginla: Norm Hall / NHLI via Getty Images)
