Coyotes smack down ‘insider’ reporting Shane Doan trade request

Casey Gagnon writes on Arizona sports as @SportsHubAZ on Twitter. He’s either been in the process of breaking one of the biggest stories in Arizona Coyotes franchise history, or been led astray by a source, or is dropping large amounts of canine feces on social media. But we’re pretty sure we know where the Coyotes stand on the story.

To set the scene: Gagnon has been tweeting about franchise legend Shane Doan requesting a trade from the struggling Coyotes. On Jan. 5, he reported that Doan made the trade request in November, and that the request was denied by GM Don Maloney.

He then reported that Doan was forced to give a “loyalty interview” to the Arizona Republic, which can be found here. Doan is quoted as saying about a trade demand: "It hasn't even crossed my mind. It's not even something I'm thinking about. I don't foresee me ever making that decision."

Furthermore, he was the only player forced to attend new majority owner Andrew Barroway’s introductory presser.

Gagnon went on to report a rift in the new ownership over Doan, and that the Winnipeg Jets and Ottawa Senators were the leaders for his services, and that the situation would be resolved before the Coyotes’ game against the Jets on Thursday night and that the Vancouver Canucks pulled out of the Doan deal yesterday and that Doan has given Maloney a list of five teams to which he’ll accept a trade and that Doan AND Antoine Vermette could be a package out of town.

Look, we have no idea about Gagnon’s credibility. News can come from unlikely sources, and does every day. Either he’s writing a fictional timeline of a trade that’s never going to happen, or he’s publishing something he’s being told, whether accurate or not.

We have reached out to someone we trust in that media market, and they said Gagnon’s been frozen out by the team and its rights holder, for what it’s worth. And we also heard this from another source:

"The Coyotes denied him a press pass at the start of the season and he retaliated by slamming our real media and our media department. So in true Coyotes fan fashion, he was punked with a bunch of rumors that he spread without checking his sources."

Ouch.

As for the Coyotes … well, they finally did respond on Thursday to the trade rumor.

Ouch again. That’s all, yolks...

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