WON'T BE DENIED
As opposed to years past, the Rangers now seem to be facing a good problem — they have too many defensemen who could possibly contribute this season.
If it’s up to Tony DeAngelo, the mercurial 22-year-old, he has an idea where he believes he belongs when the season starts Oct. 4.
“I think there’s no doubt, in my opinion, this is where I should be. But I also have to go out there and prove it,” DeAngelo told The Post before notching a power-play assist in an assertive 18:43 of ice time, his third preseason game that was a 4-3 overtime win against the Devils on Monday night at the Garden.
“I think we have a lot of good players, a lot of good competition. I also feel like there’s opportunity to be had.”
The thing is that DeAngelo can’t be sent down to AHL Hartford without clearing waivers, which would never happen as he finishes up the final year of his entry-level deal at a modest $863,333 salary-cap hit before reaching restricted free agency (with no arbitration rights) next summer. So he is going to be with the Rangers for the foreseeable future, unless general manager Jeff Gorton finds he might be most valuable as part of a trade package for, say, the Blue Jackets’ disgruntled winger Artemi Panarin.
But DeAngelo has value to the Rangers on the ice this season, with the right side of the defense a relatively open competition. Kevin Shattenkirk and Adam McQuaid are the only established veterans on the right, while Neal Pionk, 23, had a terrific rookie year and is likely penciled in above DeAngelo. But maybe to Pionk’s disadvantage, he could be sent to the Wolf Pack without waivers, and it’s possible that’s where he goes to play huge minutes, at least to start the season.
Other than that, DeAngelo is
competing against players on their off-side in veterans Brendan Smith and Fredrik Claesson, and possibly Rob O’Gara, the Long Island native who is having himself a pretty good training camp.
“There are still a lot of ‘D’ here,” first-year coach David Quinn said. “[DeAngelo] is certainly a guy that brings a lot to the table that I like. He’s got a mobility factor to him, he’s got good hockey sense. I’ve liked his game.
“We haven’t had in-depth conversations about how deep we’re going to go, but he’s certainly a strong candidate.”
Quinn has said that he is open to carrying eight defenseman on his 23-man roster, but the development of Pionk or DeAngelo would likely be lessened if either spends a significant amount of time as a healthy scratch. That likely means that DeAngelo is going to open with the Rangers, and he’s likely going to play.
With a coach who did quite a bit of developing young talent while at Boston University, that could be a good thing for the maturation of DeAngelo.
“Quinny, he’s real vocal on the ice, a lot of teaching moments and stuff,” DeAngelo said. “Real beneficial to our group right now. We have a younger, skilled group, so he’s been preaching a lot of stuff. Hopefully it translates into the games.”
But like most players, he was trying to come into this training camp with a clean slate. If he would have made the team just on his play rather than his waiver situation is hard to tell, but he was surely hoping to prove that this is where he belongs.
“I know where I want to be. I guess where I fit will play itself out,” he said. “I don’t dictate where I’m going to play or where I fit. I’m kind of just playing. So trying to play the best I can and see what happens.”