Tony DeAngelo played his last game for the Rangers.
President John Davidson and CEO Jeff Gorton made the statement loud and clear during a pre-match press conference Monday against the Penguins to discuss the consequences of a physical altercation between controversial defender and goalkeeper Alexandar Georgiev afterwards. of the loss of Saturday’s overtime in Pittsburgh, which resulted in No. 77 being placed on waivers on Sunday.
“Yeah, he’s played his last game with the Rangers,” Gorton said. “What happens next I have no answer for that.”
The Post reported that the incident between DeAngelo and Georgiev followed poor communication between the two during Saturday’s overtime, which led to Sidney Crosby’s party winner. The 25-year-old made an observation to Georgiev just as the team dropped the ice and sparked the fight.
DeAngelo has been appointed by the taxi group for now, but Gorton said the organization wants to orchestrate a trade. Gorton also mentioned that there have been no discussions about terminating DeAngelo’s contract.
Davidson opened the press conference by denying speculation about DeAngelo’s relationship with rookie K’Andre Miller. There were rumors that DeAngelo was holding Miller’s first album and that the two were in a strained relationship.
“This is 100% false,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. And for people to be able to write things like other people digest it is wrong. In fact, it ‘s sad. “
The start of the final for DeAngelo was his reaction to appearing in the second and third games of the season. After the player was sanctioned for unsportsmanlike conduct for knocking on the penalty box in the season’s loss to the Islanders, head coach David Quinn replaced DeAngelo for disciplinary purposes in the rematch victory by 5- 0 before continuing with the same lineup the next game against the devils.
“After the first game of the season, he was obviously told he wasn’t going to play,” Gorton said. “Tony couldn’t get over that, it was something he was trying to achieve. I had talked to him at the time and he was saying, ‘Listen, if there’s more trouble here, the time will come when we’ll give you up and move on. No more problems, if your name contains something we have to hear, we will move on, we will make this move ”.
“I made this statement to him, something happened and I almost have to stay true to my word here and that of the organization that it was time to move on. … We feel that moving on from Tony is the right thing to do. it’s about winning and we think that’s a move we’ve had to make in our room to get on the road to victory. “
DeAngelo, who signed a two-year, $ 9.6 million extension with the Rangers this offseason, was also reprimanded by the organization for her presence on social media in recent months. From challenging a fan to a fight outside MSG to questioning what happened to the coronavirus pandemic during the recent election, DeAngelo held several conversations with Rangers to lower his profile off the ice.
Asked if his social media scams had anything to do with the organization’s decision to go ahead, Davidson said there was no correlation.
“There’s a fine line with social media, but obviously there’s freedom of speech,” he said. “Without a doubt, we look at what our players say and do on social media. Tony, we’ve had an informal discussion about it, there’s always a drip effect. “
DeAngelo came to Broadway from the Coyotes in the 2017 draft day negotiation with the seventh team (Lias Andersson, now with the Kings) in exchange for Derek Stepan and Antti Raanta. He had a background in the Ontario Hockey League, which included a two-time suspension for violating the league’s policy of harassment, abuse and diversity.
“We’ve done a lot of research, we’ve talked to a lot of people about Tony before we acquired him,” Gorton said. “We did our homework, we felt comfortable. If we look at his history, I think you know that his season spoke for itself last year.
“There have been a few things along the way, but really nothing that suggests anything from his past at Juniors, there’s nothing like this that has ever reached us.”