Over the coming days, weeks, months, and years many reporters will proclaim to have the 'real' or 'untold' story. First out of the gate is Dave Shoalts. In his Globe and Mail piece he lays out the timeline he has pieced together from sources about the final hours of the lockout. Turns out that Shane Doan of the Phoenix Coyotes is the hero!

Then Doan went to work. He told Daly and Batterman it was not about the money. The players already knew that even at $64.3-million their contracts, signed when they received 57 per cent of HRR rather than 50, would be clipped by escrow payments in the cap system.

Rather, it was about family. A difference of less than $2-million in a 2013-14 salary cap may not seem like much but $1.8-million multiplied by 30 teams was $54-million. In a league where the median salary is $1.4-million, which means 370 of 740 players earn that much or less, that $54-million remaining available for teams to spend means a lot.

It would mean, Doan said, teams could re-sign more players. That means fewer families disrupted by moves to another city. If even two players per team could be saved, that would be 60 families left undisturbed. It was a huge issue for the players.

Within an hour, Daly and Batterman were convinced. They agreed on behalf of the owners to a cap of $64.3-million.

Wow! What a hero! Ummm except...Shane Doan says that he did nothing of the sort:

Now, that's not to say that Shane Doan didn't have an impact as he himself admits that he spoke with the two. Just that he didn't sit down with Daly and Banterman and bring the lockout to a stirring conclusion using flowery rhetoric like he was in a scene out of 12 Angry Men. Who knows, maybe he heard it from the same source that told him Ice Edge was going to buy Manchester United.

Update: Larry Brooks had the same story on Sunday which makes it funnier.