Arizona Coyotes Player Grades: Joe Vitale
With the Arizona Coyotes 2015-16 season complete, it’s time to dive into each player’s performance and make a final tally on how they fared this season.
The 2015-16 season was brief for Arizona Coyotes forward Joe Vitale due to injury.
The Coyotes took the ice for the first time on October 9th.
Four games later, Vitale drew into the lineup for the first and last time on October 17th against the Boston Bruins.
I. . C/RW. Arizona Coyotes. JOE VITALE
In the midst of a 5-3 loss to the Boston, the Bruins did what they are known to do; get rough with the opposing team’s star players.
After some rough-housing in the 2nd period with various Bruins and defender Oliver Ekman-Larsson, things quickly escalated physically. Ekman-Larsson got involved in a shoving match with Jimmy Hayes that brought both teams together, and from that scrum Joe Vitale and Kevan Miller took umbrage with each other and they came to blows.
Vitale gives up three inches and a little bit of weight to Miller. Early into the fight he was tagged pretty hard. Miller caught him with several solid blows to the face around his eye in the melee, and after the fisticuffs were over #14 did not return to the ice for the rest of the season.
The fight with Miller ended up fracturing his orbital bone and left Vitale suffering with a concussion. In January, some three months later, the forward was still suffering from concussion symptoms and former general manager Don Maloney reported there was no change in his status.
In February, the Arizona Coyotes officially shut Joe Vitale down for the season.
Shortly after the fight occurred, Brendan Porter of Five For Howling touched on the issue of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and it’s affect on our favorite sport. With the length of absence and recurring issues Vitale had that stemmed from the Miller fight, it’s a valid concern regarding #14.
There has been no news since the Arizona Coyotes announced he would not return, so it’s unclear if the concussion issues are still lingering. Hopefully there has been progress made in the intervening weeks and months.
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Vitale is under contract and set to make 1.3M with the Arizona Coyotes for the 2016-17 season if he is able to return to the ice.
Regardless of that decision, let’s hope whatever issues plagued him in 2015-16 are behind him and are not a long lasting concern for him and his family.