FanHouse Shane Doan

FanHouse's Adam Gretz takes a look at his top 50 players in the NHL. No. 50 is Phoenix Coyotes forward Shane Doan.

I don't know why, but I find it kind of amazing that there are just six players remaining in the NHL that suited up for the Winnipeg Jets: Teemu Selanne, Keith Tkachuk, Teppo Numminen, Nikolai Khabibulin, Kris Draper and Shane Doan. Five of those players were on the final Jets team in 1995-96 before they made their move to the desert. Doesn't seem like it was that long ago that they were still in Winnipeg rocking the white out's.

Doan is the only player that remains with the organization, as he's played his entire 13-year career with the team that drafted him No. 7 overall in 1995.

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It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We continue our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Pacific Division.

San Jose saw its Presidents' Trophy campaign come to a surprising end in the first round of the NHL playoffs, Los Angeles is still the perfect spot for Dany Heatley, and is there any hope for success on the ice in Phoenix?

Columbus goalie Steve Mason entered Friday's game in Colorado having registered three consecutive shutouts. He managed to keep the Avalanche off the board for 17 minutes, until Darcy Tucker snapped Mason's streak with his fifth goal of the season at the 17:20 mark of the opening frame. The 20-year old rookie posted 199 consecutive minutes of shutout hockey for Columbus, and Tucker's tally in the first period was the only goal he surrendered on the night, as he turned aside 23-of-24 shots in a 6-1 Blue Jackets win.

Mason has been a great story for the Blue Jackets, as he's pretty much carried them this season when you consider they've scored only nine goals in the eight games he's lost, including being shutout three times. He's allowed more than three goals only two times this season, and has yet to surrender more than four in a single game. Should be interesting to see how long he can continue to ride this hot streak.

As for the rest of the Blue Jackets, following Tucker's goal they pretty much took this game over and erupted for six goals over the final two periods. Rick Nash finished with a four-point night (penalty shot goal, three assists) while Kristian Huselius (two goals), Mike Commodore, Jakub Voracek and R.J. Umberger also scored for Columbus.

The win actually puts Columbus one-point ahead of Colorado for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, while the Blue Jackets are 3-0 to open their current six-game road trip, extending their winning streak to four games overall.

When you take a look at the standings in the NHL's Western Conference, it's easy to see things are looking up for the Phoenix Coyotes. After years of futility, the team is now starting to develop plenty of young talent around a solid core of veteran players like Shane Doan, Oli Jokinen, Ilya Bryzgalov and Ed Jovanovski. Put it all together, and the Coyotes are in the thick of the Western Conference playoff race a little less than halfway through the regular season.

Unfortunately for the Coyotes and head coach Wayne Gretzky, the most important number for the Coyotes these days isn't the point total in the standings, it's the numbers on the balance sheet. Earlier this month, David Shoalts of the Globe and Mail detailed the tale of woe that is Phoenix's balance sheet, with the team losing $30 million per year over the last two seasons. The line from that story that was most chilling, came from one former NHL governor who declined to be identified:

"I don't know how they can sustain the losses," one former governor said."The team loses so much money you can't sell it. If I were offered the team for a dollar, I'd say no because you can't fix it."

It is estimated by the former governor that the Coyotes have lost more than $200-million since 2001 - at least $70 million beyond the purchase price.

With the financial position of Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes on the brink of collapse thanks to the ill health of his trucking company, Swift Transportation, logic dictates that those losses can't be sustained for much longer. And if ESPN.com's Scott Burnside's latest report is correct, the NHL is already making preparations for what looks like an inevitable financial collapse.

What a dreadful month of December for the Penguins. After their 2-0 loss to Tampa Bay on Tuesday night, the Penguins find themselves with a 4-6-1 record this month, and have dropped back-to-back home games to Toronto and Tampa Bay by a combined score of 9-3, while getting outshot 69-38 in the process. There's no way to sugarcoat it -- that sucks. Even worse, the Penguins haven't won two straight games since November 13-15. Ouch.

Tampa Bay picked up goals from Matt Pettinger and Paul Szczechura, while Mike Smith turned aside all 15 shots he faced. Though, he received a little help from the Penguins, when Petr Sykora honked a pair of shots wide of the goal when he had Smith beat, and then Evgeni Malkin inexplicably attempted to make a pass when he had a breakaway. Perhaps he's serious about that century mark with the assists, I don't know.

Though, the save of the night was when Malkin, shorthanded, had another breakaway in the third period -- in what was still a one-goal game -- and was stoned by Smith. Tampa Bay turned it around the other way and Szczechura redirected a pass from Jussi Jokinen passed Marc-Andre Fleury to ice the game.

It's important to realize it's only December and that the Penguins had a similar record a year ago today -- and, hey, that season turned out okay -- but that doesn't change the fact this is some really bad hockey right now.

One of the great things about sports is the unpredictability and the fact that, if you watch enough, you're going to see something that you have never seen before. Monday was one of those days for anyone watching the IIHF World Hockey Championship qualifying round. Chances are, like me, you weren't. But that's what's so great about blogs. We're here to pick up the pieces and show you what you missed. What you and I missed was one of the craziest bounces a puck has taken in recent memory.

Monday, Canada and Finland were squaring off in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The game was a blowout as Canada was leading 4-1 during the third period. Shane Doan, who you may remember from the Phoenix Coyotes, took a slapper from the right faceoff circle, which went right by the Finnish goaltender, Niklas Backstrom who usually backstops the Minnesota Wild. The goal looked innocent enough if it weren't for the befuddled look and body language of Backstrom and his defenseman Sami Lepisto. They might have been the only people who knew what had happened, until the TV broadcast played a slow motion replay.

Doan's shot, oddly enough, was way off target. It was so off target that it deflected off Lepisto's helmet and into the back of the net. Seriously. I'm not able to embed the video here, but if you check it out and fast forward to the :39 mark, it's plain as day. Slapshot. Off the defender's noggin. Past the netminder for a goal. It really doesn't get any luckier than that. And thankfully, Lepisto appears to be OK.

This isn't the first time that Finland has been involved in a controversial goal during these World Champs, either. On Sunday, the Finns were gifted a goal by the video replay officials. In that instance, the puck clearly went through the side of the net but was not disallowed. They went on to win that game against Team USA, 3-2.

Who's In: GM Don Maloney (NYR), G Alex Auld (FA-FLA), G David Aebischer (FA-MTL), RW Radim Vrbata (Trade-CHI) , LW Tomáš Surový (FA-SEL) and LW/RW Mike York (FA-PHI).

Who's Out: GM Mike Barnett (Fired), C Kevyn Adams (Trade-CHI), G Curtis Joseph (FA), RW Owen Nolan (FA-CGY), C Mike Ricci (Retired), C Jeremy Roenick (FA-SJS) and C Dave Scatchard (FA).

What's Changed: To celebrate their first 10 seasons in Phoenix last season, the Coyotes coined the slogan, "Decade in the Desert". To which one might respond, "Is that all?" After missing the playoffs four times in five seasons going into 2006-07, it sure felt like the Coyotes had been lost in the wasteland for a lot longer than that.

To help find their way out of their metaphorical desert, former GM Mike Barnett imported a boatload of veteran talent designed to speed their return to the playoffs under the guiding hand of Head Coach Wayne Gretzky.

Think we might have seen this picture before?

With the exception of a surprising seven-game winning streak that straddled New Year's, the results were more or less predictable, as the plan short-circuited well before the end of the season. With a few notable exceptions, the vets were shipped out of town ahead of the deadline or let go in the offseason and the rebuild was on.

Next to go were Gretzky buddies Barnett and Assistant General Manager Cliff Fletcher and in came new GM Don Maloney with a mandate to rebuild from the bottom up.