I'm not in the trade DeAngelo bucket at all. I liked his moxie in the playoffs, but I thought he was disappointing in the post-season. Look he's done nothing but make Gorts look good.
Did Tony have a disappointing post-season, yeah he did. But he was fired up about it, and for him I think it was a great experience to help him harness his emotions in a big game. I loved the fact that he dropped the gloves to send a message, and I liked that he competed hard.
- The Derek Stepan Trade is now officially the Tony DeAngelo Trade
- The Rangers missed on the 7th overall pick, but DeAngelo single handedly outscored all of the forwards in that trade this year, and will probably continue to do so for a while.
- The need to pay Tony DeAngelo netted the Rangers another 1st round pick to give them another shot at a first as a byproduct of Tony's Play.
- You get Skjeiky Brady off the team and that helped the team become better defensively. The Rangers kept winning without him.
- Helped you clear $5.25M right away. That helped you get clearance to re-sign Kreider, and have the ability to pay the other RFA's.
That said- I'd ding off a little bit on the signing bonus structure for the playoffs. Some sort of symbolic gesture. Rangers should lock him up to a 5-6 year deal. Anything between $5.8M to $6.3M on the cap is favorable. The Rangers can front load the deal and Tony can put the time value of money to good use.
Tony'll need some advice on how to put that to good use, but there are a lot of hockey guys in the investment world. Once he's papered up he'll be good. With some of the advisors around him, I don't think cap hit will be much of an issue as much as what Tony can do with the up-front money.
If Tony's producing, he's going to get a lot of sponsorship deals in the area. He just hasn't hit that level of fame or recognition yet but that comes with racking up a couple of years like the last one.
He played through a hamstring injury in the playoffs.
But yeah, I think he's a keeper unless something really special comes around.