Last night perfectly encapsulated what is wrong with this team:

They treat Antoine Vermette like he is a star player; a first line centre.

He is not.

Now, don't get me wrong, the team allowed 4 goals and blew a two goal lead, so I don't want to hang the whole thing on Vermette, but this was a winnable game and he specifically blew it.

On a power-play with less than 2 minutes left in regulation, the Coyotes were moving the puck nicely around the offensive zone, which is what they do, when the puck slid over to a wide-open Vermette, hovering unattended just inside the blue-line.

Vermette, the Coyotes first centre option on the first PP unit, shot the puck a good 20 feet wide. The puck careened off the boards to the Dallas player Ryan Garbutt who went on a breakaway and scored a nice goal.

20 feet wide. An NHL first power-play centre shot an uncontested puck twenty feet wide.

The Coyotes pulled the goalie and had a two man advantage, but could not beat the Star's Lehtonen who was outstanding in goal, especially in the third with the game winding down. Lehtonen stopped at least two sure goals with spectacular saves in the final minute.

So, yes, the Coyotes blew a two goal lead, and yes, they allowed a short-handed goal to lose about 1 minute before securing an OT point, but it really was a game they deserved to win. They threw almost 40 shots at Dallas and were prevented from winning only by some great play by the Dallas goalie.

The Coyotes' power-play is now on an 0-18 streak of futility. Considering they have the best point duo in the league, that is pathetic. Could it be the coaches refusal to play his best forwards on the man advantage? Doan and Vermette - this is "their" team. They get all the best minutes, they get the most PP minutes and they are not the team's best players.

If the coach won't move past playing these two guys, whose best days are somewhere closer to 2006, then the GM needs to step in and move them. Come on. There is no reason to have such a bad PP and considering how it was 0-17, maybe that was the perfect time to go with the obvious Gagner-Hanzal-Boedker unit that should have been the #1 PP unit since training camp.

Hanzal is one of the best players in the NHL at creating havoc in front of the net, and Gagner is up to 100X more creative a player than Vermette - they absolutely have to be on the ice with the first unit. But they almost never are.

I can't blame Vermette for last night's loss. It was just one play in a night when they allowed 3 other goals. But it sure is a microcosm of how this season is going, and it's pretty frustrating.

Good thing Colorado and Edmonton both lost, instead of being alone in the basement, it's a basement three-way.

Thanks for reading.

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