Arizona Coyotes Player Grades: Antoine Vermette

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.

Much of the 2015-16 season was a struggle for Arizona Coyotes centerman Antoine Vermette.

Returning to the desert after hoisting the Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks, Vermette hoped to continue a solid showing in the previous years playoffs with a rejuvenated young Coyotes squad.

It didn’t quite play out the way Vermette nor former general manager Don Maloney expected.

The Québec native’s final stat line looks fairly impressive for a 32-year-old. He finished with 17 goals and 21 assists for 38 points on the season while skating over 16 minutes of ice time each night. That doesn’t tell the whole story, however, and it’s a bit of a twisted web.

Vermette spent much of the first two-thirds of the season paired up with Mikkel Boedker and the results were less than stellar. In his first 56 games, he managed just 10 goals and 14 assists and was party to some of the most egregious, boneheaded plays of the Arizona Coyotes’ season.

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The 32-year-old was unable to get anything going offensively, regularly saw his line getting caved in with shots from the opposing team, and firing off passes straight into nowhere…or worse, onto the opposing team’s sticks.

Then Mikkel Boedker was traded for Alex Tanguay and some prospects.

In his final 20 games, Antoine Vermette scored 7 goals and chipped in 7 assists while paired with Alex Tanguay and Anthony Duclair. He was a totally different player once the Boedker for Tanguay swap occurred, and it makes you wonder if Vermette and Boedker were like kryptonite for each other’s games.

If the Arizona Coyotes had gotten the Vermette we saw at the end of the season they might have been in the thick of the hunt by the time Boedker was traded for parts.

Antoine Vermette is under contract for 2016-17 at a $3.75M cap hit.

He also scored the same amount of goals as Boedker who left the Yotes because he was reportedly seeking $6M per year. That makes that $3.75M sound much better.

Next: 2015-16 Player Grades: Louis Domingue Was A Pleasant Surprise

He’ll be on board to mentor Dylan Strome and possibly Christian Dvorak should they make the NHL roster next fall. Despite the issues he had for much of the season, that’s probably a good thing.

Vermette’s production for next season is anybody’s guess. If he can cut out the turnovers and giveaways, though, Coyotes fans will breathe much easier when he’s on the ice.