When Josh Doan scored nine points in his first 11 NHL games last year, Arizona Coyotes fans wondered if the Doan surname would someday end up in the rafters of the team’s arena for the second time. Soon after that, the team announced its move to Salt Lake City, where a whole new group of fans got excited at the 22-year-old’s potential.

This season has gone differently, but it’s still ultimately positive. Here’s how his season is going.

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A hot start

Doan made the NHL straight out of training camp. He started the season hot once again, scoring the game-tying goal to send the Utah Hockey Club’s second-ever game to overtime for an eventual win over the New York Islanders.

Three games later, he notched an assist in Utah’s 5-4 overtime loss to the Anaheim Ducks. He struggled to have much impact after that, but in all fairness, so did the rest of the team; it scored just four goals in those four games.

A trip to Tucson

In order to keep Doan’s confidence high, the team reassigned him to their AHL affiliate, the Tucson Roadrunners. The NHL is not a development league and it can ultimately hurt young players to bring them up too early.

Doan understands that as well as anyone does. Not only did he witness this exact development path in teammate Dylan Guenther last year, he also knows that his father went through the same thing.

In both cases, the players went on to do great things in the NHL.

Guenther’s story is still being written, but after a 29-game stint with the Roadrunners last year where he scored a little less than a point per game, he came to the NHL and went on a tear. A few months later, he was signing his name on an eight-year contract worth more than $57 million.

When Shane Doan, Josh’s father, was 22 — the same age Josh is now — he was reassigned to the AHL midseason. He had scored just 11 points in 33 games for the Coyotes, but a trip to the minors allowed him to pot a little more than a point per game and get his confidence back up.

It took him another season of NHL hockey to really find his scoring touch, but he eventually became the highest-scoring player in Coyotes history.

If all goes according to plan, Josh will have a similar story — and it’s trending in that direction. In 14 AHL games so far, he has 11 points and 20 penalty minutes. He’s getting lots of ice time and he’s having fun.

“Confidence is a separation factor at this level,” Doan said in an interview with the Deseret News. “When you’re scoring, you’re feeling good and your game is elevated. When you’re not, you tend to grip the stick a little bit tighter.”

A positive outlook

Because Doan understands his intended development path, he’s is in no rush to get back to the NHL. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be there, but he knows that what he does in the AHL will have just as much impact on his future as anything he would have done in the NHL this year.

“It’s easy to get point-focused and say, ‘If I go score 15 points in 10 games, I’ll be right back up,’” Doan said. “That’s the last thing you want to be doing because you don’t want to take away from your game and you don’t want to start cheating. When you start doing that, you don’t develop as well and you get focused on the wrong things.”

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He also emphasized that points don’t mean anything if you can’t keep the puck out of your own net.

“Something that I take pride in is being an all-around, 200-foot player,” he said. “Sometimes, the point total might not equate to as much as you’d like down here, but you’re getting better and you feel better about your game.”

A glimpse into the future of the Utah Hockey Club

At this point in time, there’s no telling where Josh Doan’s career will take him. But two things are certain: He has the right attitude and he’s surrounded with people who will help him become a better hockey player.

Will his number end up in the rafters of an NHL arena? Nobody knows for sure — but a gambling man might be smart to put a couple bucks on it.

Utah Hockey Club right wing Josh Doan (91) congratulates teammate Utah Hockey Club defenseman Michael Kesselring (7) after Kesselring’s overtime goal, giving Utah with win over the Boston Bruins at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Saturday Oct. 19, 2024. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News
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