Let's be clear, here. The Tony DeAngelo nightmare did not start after Saturday's overtime loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins in which the troubled defenseman took a swing at goaltender Alexandar Georgiev over the latter's admittedly costly mistake. Nor did it start with his tweets, which were problematic to say the least.
Indeed, if we're going to be thorough, you could say it began years ago. He was suspended twice in the OHL for slurs and abuse of officials and once in the NHL for actually going after an official. Head coach David Quinn benched him two games for getting hit with a misconduct in the third period of the opening game of the season. Clearly, he was a loose canon just ready to go off.
To be frank, it wasn't just his support for Trump that was a red flag; it was his propensity for trafficking in racist tropes and picking fights with fans on Twitter that should've sounded alarm bells in the bowels of the Ranger organization. It is inconceivable that team president John Davidson and G.M. Jeff Gorton didn't know what was going on, and both must now bear the brunt of the blame for the disaster that the franchise must now deal with.
The decision to sign DeAngelo to a two-year $9.6 million deal is indefensible. Period. Yes, he was a restricted free agent, meaning had the Rangers not made him an offer he probably would've been awarded a one-year arbitration deal. But the Rangers could have walked away from that deal, making him an unrestricted free agent. Had they done that, it is highly unlikely another team would've signed him given that the Rangers were unable to move him during the offseason.
So now Gorton has the unenviable task of trying to get a team - any team - to take the problem child off his hands. Good luck with that. Even a team with the cap space needed to take on DeAngelo's contract will want nothing to do with a player with that much baggage. That means that this team, which is currently playing musical chairs with players on its own taxi squad just to stay in compliance with the league salary cap, will have to buy out yet another contract after this season is over. Oh goodie.
Fortunately for them, because DeAngelo is under the age of 26, they will only have to eat one third of the remaining $5.3 million he's owed on the backloaded contract, which comes out to $883k annually for two years. But the point is they didn't have to go through this. They have two young, promising defensemen in their system - Nils Lundkvist and K'Andre Miller - who are a year away from making the team. They could've moved Brendan Smith over to the right side until Lundkvist is ready to take the reigns. And they would've saved themselves almost $10 million worth of cap space in the process. Cap space they would now give their eye teeth to have.
I have been patient with Davidson and Gorton, primarily because the core they are assembling has the potential to one day be a Stanley Cup contender. But there have been hiccups along the way. The buyout situation is growing alarming. Including Henrik Lundqvist, who was bought out during the off season, the Rangers currently are carrying almost $13 million in dead cap space. And while that number will go down by about $8 million next season, the DeAngelo buyout, if it happens, will bring it back up.
But here's the greater issue. That Davidson and Gorton looked the other way with someone like DeAngelo sends the wrong message, especially to a player like Miller, who is the first African American to wear a Rangers uniform. And Davidson's explanation in his press conference that this was about "freedom of speech" is absurd on its face, something that in his days as a TV analyst he would've decried.
The New York Rangers may not be the most successful hockey organization in the NHL, but even in the days of Sonny Werblin, it would never have allowed something like this to fester within its ranks. Hopefully, the braintrust has learned its lesson and won't repeat this colossal mistake.
