NHL transactions are always hard to read. You never know if something is just salary cap manipulation, related to it or an actual move. The New York Rangers, for instance, have had to shuttle guys like K’Andre Miller and Kaapo Kakko on and off their taxi squad to save just thousands of dollars per day to stay under the cap. Or maybe there’s some arcane rule, or it comes down to just wanting to get a guy to the AHL for more ice time.
However, it appears that the Rangers putting Tony DeAngelo on waivers yesterday is for the exact reasons you’d want, i.e. he’s such a pariah among his teammates that one of them allegedly clocked him in the dressing room.
Rumors like this were flying around Twitter yesterday when the announcement was made. We’ll probably never find out for sure, but we can sure hope so. And it does seem strange that a player, despite his abhorrent personality and views, whom the Rangers stuck by for the past season and a bit suddenly decided they’d had enough. While DeAngelo has had some GIF-worthy etherings defensively, and only has one assist so far this season, the metrics say he’s actually been everything he’s always been, meaning he pushes the play the right way. And yet the Rangers still told him to get lost yesterday.
But to simply go by on-ice production would completely miss the point of the problems with DeAngelo, who has been a raging penis from the moment he emerged out of the womb if not in his embryonic stage. DeAngelo is at the forefront of neanderthal hockey players who follow the MAGA-chud lifestyle, and he’s a bad look for the entire league. Stories of his mistreatment of K’Andre Miller, who is Black, have been widespread, and, given DeAngelo’s public opinions, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out why he was treating Miller that way. The one about keeping the puck from Miller’s first goal is particularly petty and shitheel, and probably should have gotten DeAngelo beaten over the head with a skate-sharpener. Clearly, DeAngelo has deserved eating a fist or two for a while.
That doesn’t mean the Rangers come out clean in this. They kept DeAngelo around when it was clear he was going to be a problem, and put him front and center of various marketing campaigns even when it was clear what he was. If anything, that only enabled his racism bullhorn even more. He is their creature, or was at least.
Still, the Rangers are better off without him. The league is better off without him, but some team will take the plunge because nothing ever goes away in the NHL. Still, let’s enjoy this temporary W over a true scumbag while we can.
Bradley Beal had himself a night. And not in the mode of having a really great game. At least not entirely. Beal and Russell Westbrook combined for a dramatic ending to the Wizards’ 149-146 win over the Nets — and former Westbrook teammates Kevin Durant and James Harden — combining for two three-pointers in six seconds that won the game.
But Beal also had this first half.
The first half looked like Beal attempting to see and raise Harden’s Costanza act to get out of Houston, only this time to get him out of D.C. It’s understandable that Beal might want out of an organization that has simply not put a relevant team together since the Carter administration. They are 4-12 this year and still headed the wrong way.
But Beal clearly didn’t have the gumption to go full turd, ending the game with 37 points. Most of us get up to the edge and look into the chasm of true latent insubordination, and don’t like the feeling of it staring back into us. Then again, Harden got exactly what he wanted out of jumping over the edge, didn’t he? Who’s the real one to follow?