When Arizona State announced it would be elevating its club team to NCAA Division I, everyone in the state connected to hockey took notice.
It was big news for a region with a growing hockey reputation, and players of all levels from youth hockey teams to the NHL team in Glendale perked up. And that includes the captain of the Arizona Coyotes, Shane Doan.
“I think it was awesome for the Valley and the hockey programs here in the Valley to have a team like that,” Doan said. “It’s going to be great for the kids that play here to have the opportunity to go and watch other kids that have played here and gone on to play Division I.”
Doan sees ASU players, particularly the five local players on the Sun Devils’ roster, as players for younger players to emulate. It’s part of the hockey ambassador role to the Phoenix area that Doan has assumed, spending nearly all of his professional career with the Coyotes. Drafted seventh overall by the Winnipeg Jets in 1995, he played only one season in Winnipeg before the Jets relocated to Phoenix to become the Coyotes. Of his 19 seasons in the NHL, all but one have come in Arizona.
“Anything that’s involved in the Phoenix Valley, yeah I get behind it,” he said. “I see what’s going on and I’m excited about it.”
Doan may be the face of hockey in the Grand Canyon State, but one of his Coyotes teammates knows first-hand what the Sun Devil hockey players will be experiencing. Doan didn't go to college – he was drafted out of major juniors in Canada – but winger Joe Vitale played four seasons at Northeastern University from 2005-09, and was a captain his final two years. He was selected by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2005 NHL Entry Draft.
“I remember college, an 18-year-old kid, you want to play hockey and you want to go to school,” Vitale said. “I look back on my four years of college and that was literally some of the greatest years of my life. To experience college and play hockey at the same time, usually you have to pick one or the other.”
The Coyotes and Sun Devils have already teamed up, announcing that four ASU games will be played at the Coyotes’ home of Gila River Arena in Glendale. Hockey and Arizona are starting make a lot more sense together, in no small part because of those two teams.
The Coyotes have been the state’s hockey team since they arrived in 1996. Now the Sun Devils are here, and if you ask Doan and Vitale, that can only be a good thing.
“Such a great college atmosphere and great school, to bring college hockey to that, it’s going to be the best recruiting tool right there,” Vitale said.
“Arizona– it’s not a bad place to live,” he added with a smirk (Vitale signed with the Coyotes as a free agent before the 2014 season). “ASU here is a pretty good place to go to school.”