The New York Rangers have put one of their best defensemen, Tony DeAngelo, on waivers after an altercation with goalie Alexandar Georgiev and alternate captain Chris Kreider.
As good a hockey player as DeAngelo is, his personality was always an issue. While this is the first time I have personally heard a lot of this (I knew he was a Trump supporter, but my Quebecer bias thought a hockey player might have only been a passive supporter or at worst gone "cult-light" unlike, say, the Capitol insurrectionists), it is substancially documented that he has always had issues.
There was a bout of anger after a loss as a youth, an eight-game suspension in the OHL for using racial slurs on a teammate that shed light on the fact that it was at the time his second disciplinary measure in such circumstances, and he's been suspended in the OHL and NHL for (physical) abuse of officials. And the intention to leave Twitter for Parler speaks loudly to his worldview as well.
I don't know how I missed a lot of this. I kept wondering why he wasn't mentioned by the Canadian (and Hockey) media in general, and it felt off that a top-four regular who is among the league leaders in points would be so often overlooked, but I get it now, they were just sweeping it under the rug. I have (at least) three of his cards, so one more to feature here after today's post - and I'm fairly certain no one will take them off my hands even if I don't want them in my collection anymore. I'll have to recycle them as a "teaching tool" for my kids, I guess. And I didn't mention it here today, but even in the NHL, he's been a dick to a Black teammate, K’Andre Miller, so I guess I already know what I'll write about next time.
We'll see how that all develops. Deadspin - which looks intent on calling all hockey players inherently racist while overlooking the fact that skaters from 21 countries and 30 nationalities whose homelands may be dealing with racial issues in ways that differ from the Amerian white/Black/OPOC paradigm form their "white" contingent - are on DeAngelo's case and dug out quotes from his father that show this is how he was probably raised. I'm confident they'll get at the bottom of the story.
Here is today's subject, on card #176 from Fleer's 2016-17 Fleer Showcase set and Hot Prospects Autos sub-set, manufactured by Upper Deck:
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