Tony DeAngelo has offered an explanation about what happened between him and Alexandar Georgiev more than three years ago that arguably changed the course of his career.
The defenceman hopped on the Morning Cuppa Hockey podcast on Daily Faceoff Wednesday to talk about the shocking altercation during the 2020-21 season between him and his goalie while both were members of the New York Rangers.
The two got into a fight on Jan. 30, 2021, outside the team dressing room at Madison Square Garden after an overtime loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. DeAngelo was placed on waivers by the Rangers the following day.
“It was a tough game. He struggled, I struggled in the game. We’re playing against Pittsburgh and I’m coming down the tunnel. I yelled at Georgi, ‘Make a bleeping save!’ 100 per cent,” DeAngelo said, taking some blame for the altercation. “If I didn’t yell at Georgi, Georgi wasn’t going to turn around and try to do anything, that’s a fact. Obviously, I started it. I wasn’t thinking what happened next was gonna happen, that was a surprise to me.”
DeAngelo said Georgiev tried to headbutt him, to which he retaliated by hitting the goalie in the helmet with his stick. He said that nothing happened after those two blows, and the two went into the room.
However, the next day, DeAngelo was told to not go to the team’s practice facility and was put on release waivers. He said he only found out he’d been put on waivers because Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman broke the news.
Then-Rangers GM Jeff Gorton eventually announced that DeAngelo had played his last game for the club.
“I had spoke to him at that time and said, ‘Listen, if there’s any more issues here, the time is going to come where we’re going to put you on waivers and move on. No more issues. If your name is in anything at all that we have to hear, we’re going to move on,'” Gorton said at the time.
“I made that statement to him, something happened and I pretty much have to stay true to my word here and the organization’s word that it was time to move on.”
He eventually cleared waivers and was released by the Rangers.
DeAngelo said on Wednesday that the placement on waivers didn’t come as a shock to him, as the 2020-21 season up to that point hadn’t gone his way following a productive 2019-20 campaign that saw him notch a career-high 53 points (15 goals, 38 assists).
At the time, Gorton believed that DeAngelo “wasn’t able to move on from” being a healthy scratch earlier that season. Then-coach David Quinn benched DeAngelo for a bad penalty in the season opener and was put on alert by the organization in the aftermath of that decision.
“The season started off so rocky, a lot of it being my fault,” DeAngelo said. “[The fight] was probably just icing on the cake.”
He explained that there’s no bad blood between him and Georgiev, that the two had never been the “best of buddies” but thinks that they would’ve both come back to the rink following the fight and put it behind them.
After his departure from the Rangers, DeAngelo eventually signed with the Carolina Hurricanes for the 2021-22 season and finished with a career-high 41 assists to go along with 51 total points.
He was then traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in the 2022 off-season and was released the following summer, eventually signing back with the Hurricanes on a one-year deal for 2023-24. He finished the year with three goals and eight assists in just 31 games.
The 28-year-old is unsigned for the 2024-25 season.