If Doan wants to continue playing hopefully there is a team willing to employ him. Hopefully that team is a Stanley Cup contender. Doan deserves as much, but that wasn't likely to happen with the Coyotes, whose growth would continue to be stunted if they kept employing Doan.
This isn't a knock on Doan the person. There are few, if any, better people in the game than Doan. He's a leader off the ice and by example on the ice.
This is about Doan the 40-year-old player turning 41 on Oct. 10. This is about a player coming off his least productive season since 1998-99.
Doan had 27 points (six goals, 21 assists) in 74 games this season. He scored his 400th career goal on Dec. 23, but scored only two more the rest of the way.
On a team that is trying to grow with a homegrown young core, Doan was out of place this season and would have been again next season.
Again, this isn't a knock on Doan as much as it is reality. The Coyotes have a surplus of young forwards who have to get playing time to find out if they're for real.
It's time for Dylan Strome, the No. 3 pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, to get a chance, a longer look than the seven games he got with the Coyotes this season.
He had one point in those seven games, was a healthy scratch for 10 more and was sent to back to Erie of the Ontario Hockey League on Nov. 20. Strome then had 75 points in 35 games in the OHL and helped Erie get to the Memorial Cup final, where it lost to Windsor.
Strome has graduated from junior hockey. He has to be given every possible chance to become an NHL player this season.