Follow @james_tanner123 I am not sure if it's romanticism or the fact that they haven't seen him play, or that people just assume anyone on a Cup winning team is automatically great, but there's way too many people suggesting the Coyotes should resign Antoine Vermette.
My apologies if these suggestions are really just killer ironic jokes, playing on the premium price Chicago paid for him and his overall ineffectiveness.
Now, as unlikely as that seems, how could anyone really think the Coyotes should get him back?
Let us review some facts:
1) The Coyotes are likely not going to ever be a cap team, so running on a smaller budget means that playing young players should be not only a priority, but an organizational philosophy - they're cheaper and provide much more value.
Yes, some vets are necessary, but not when you need to sign them as UFA deals.
2) Not that 38 points is all that good to start with, but even those meager totals are inflated by the ridiculous amount of top unit PP time the Coyotes let him skate last year. At 5v5, he had only 21 points, meaning there were more than 80 centres with more points than him.
He's in a range with Shawn Mattias and Shawn Horcoff.
3) I've heard people say he's going to ask for around 5-6 million per season.
4)Yes he scored a few important goals in the Playoffs, (three game winners) but let's keep in mind he also scored on 25% of his shots ( he had 4 goals, so do the math, it's not flattering) and posted a negative corsi on the Cup winning team while playing fairly protected minutes, and starting in the offensive zone most of the time.
Basically, he wasn't used in a "shutdown" role and wasn't offensive either. His PDO of 104.9 for the Playoffs suggest even his 7 ES points were a lucky total.
People look at those two game winners and think he must of had a good Playoffs, but he wasn't very good and the Hawks overpaid massively when they sent the Coyotes a first-round pick and Klas Dahlbeck in exchange for him.
5) A player known - by reputation - as a good defender and penalty killer, Vermette averaged one second per game on the Blackhawks PK.
6) He's scoring less than half the points at 5v5 than he was five yeasr ago. He's a player in massive decline who the Coyotes played way too high up in the lineup, and I think it's important that they move on and rebuild the team.
If they bring back Vermette, they're going to have Doan and Smith and there will be no room for the young players to establish their voice and role within the team dynamic. It's just too much of the same. And if you want me to be honest, they should probably try to move both Smith and Doan and start fresh, but one will never happen and the other has too big of a contract.
In conclusion, it's borderline crazy-talk to suggest bringing Vermette back to the Coyotes. Instead, if you want veteran leadership a better and cheaper player who is also younger, might I suggest Eric Condra?
Either way, the idea to bring back Vermette is terrible.
Thanks for reading.