Vermette Thriving in the Desert at BetLM

Vermette Thriving in the Desert

GLENDALE, Az. (NHL/Newsfeed) – It was that gap­ing divot smack dab in the mid­dle of the Phoenix Coy­otes’ lineup.

It was the rea­son the Coy­otes couldn’t match up with the rest of the Pacific Divi­sion, the rea­son they were fight­ing for their play­off lives in the West­ern Con­fer­ence. It was the rea­son Kyle Tur­ris’ petu­lant and pro­tracted con­tract hold­out and trade demands grated on fans like fin­gers across a chalkboard.

The Coy­otes had a big, hard-checking cen­ter in Mar­tin Han­zal. But they lacked a true play­mak­ing cen­ter to match with their other offensive-minded wingers. Some who could win power-play face­offs and turn them into goals for a unit that ranked last in the League in man-advantage tallies.

Day­mond Langkow tried. Boyd Gor­don, Kyle Chipchura and Marc-Antonie Pouliot tried. But a week before the trade dead­line, Phoenix gen­eral man­ager Don Mal­oney got a jump on the last-minute shop­ping and caught Colum­bus Blue Jack­ets GM Scott How­son in fire-sale mode – bring­ing slick and savvy Antoine Ver­mette to the desert and using the second-round pick acquired by ship­ping Tur­ris to Ottawa as the down payment.

“I went from a team that was going nowhere to a team that dri­ving for the play­offs. I couldn’t have been hap­pier,” said Ver­mette, who rev­eled in the excite­ment of a deep play­off run while help­ing the Sen­a­tors to the 2007 Stan­ley Cup Final, but couldn’t have been fur­ther from another taste in Ohio.

“You want to play mean­ing­ful games. You want to be part of that push.”

Vermette’s num­bers down the stretch weren’t eye-popping – three goals and 10 points in 22 games. But coach Dave Tippett’s lineup tum­blers fell into place with Vermette’s arrival and his four assists in the final four games of the reg­u­lar sea­son help Phoenix side-step three teams and claim the first divi­sion title in fran­chise history.

“Any­time a vet­eran player changes teams it takes a lit­tle bit to get going,” Tip­pett said. “But I think you’re see­ing the ben­e­fits of that trade in the playoffs.”

Veremtte’s skills, expe­ri­ence and per­sonal pref­er­ence for the bright lights are really pay­ing off. After scor­ing four goals and col­lect­ing five points in lead­ing the Coy­otes to their first play­off series win in 25 years, Ver­mette is at it again against Nashville. He has three points in two games, putting up a goal and an assist while win­ning 13 of 20 draws in a 5–3 win over the Predators.

“He takes a lot of key face­offs, plays the power play, plays the penalty kill … he’s fit in very well with our group,” Tip­pett said. “The other thing that I really like is that we have a lot of real good peo­ple in our dress­ing room and he’s a great team­mate. He cares about every­thing we’re try­ing to do. He’s fit in very well with our group.”

The Coy­otes are also get­ting the domino effect that all suc­cess­ful play­off teams crave – four lines of nas­ti­ness and grit. Langkow is thriv­ing between Chipchura and Gilbert Burle on an energy line. Gor­don teams with Tay­lor Pyatt and Lauri Kor­pikoski to check skilled opponents.

And Ver­mette, between Mikkel Boed­ker and cap­tain Shane Doan on the right, is the per­fect com­ple­ment to the “Prime Line” of Han­zal, Ray Whit­ney and Radim Vrbata, a strong sec­ond PP trio and a rea­son why the Coy­otes scored nine goals on Pekka Rinne and the Preda­tors while sweep­ing the first two games at home.

Ver­mette has seen a band­wagon grow as it rolls down­hill in Ottawa, when the Sen­a­tors finally reached their poten­tial and tasted play­off suc­cess. Now in Phoenix, with a team that is play­ing for its very exis­tence and is lit­er­ally own­ing a new group of fans with every win, going from a strug­gling team to play­ing an inte­gral part in the head­line story has him pumped.

“It’s a lot of fun, a lot of excite­ment,” he said. “I know it means a lot for this orga­ni­za­tion, and I’m very thrilled to be part of this right now. That’s what play­offs do. Even in Ottawa there was the same thing, the more and more you win the more atten­tion and excite­ment you cre­ate in the city and it was fun. So, hope­fully we can keep doing this.”

The Coy­otes swept all three games in Chicago in the first round and haven’t lost a road game in reg­u­la­tion since Mar. 15. They are 11–2 in their last 13 games over­all and were 2–0 in Nashville this sea­son and 4–1-1 in three years since Tip­pett took over for Wayne Gret­zky behind the Phoenix bench.

Just one win in either Game 3 Wednes­day or Game 4 Fri­day would put the Coy­otes firmly in the driver’s seat against the shell-shocked Preda­tors, who were steam­rolled by Phoenix’s best game of the post­sea­son Sunday.

“Con­fi­dence is a huge fac­tor in any sport any­ways, but when you know you can do it, it’s a huge fac­tor,” Ver­mette said. “One of the keys is the way you can deal with emo­tion. It’s a big emo­tional swing in the play­offs, and you need to man­age those well. You can’t get too excited. There’s a moment for that after the game when you win. But after that, it’s game time and you have to focus on the right place. I think that’s been one of the keys to our suc­cess in the playoffs.”

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