Photo Credit: Rebecca McCormick
“He is a great player, skates well, is able to make plays,” Ivan Provorov said when asked thoughts with playing with Tony DeAngelo earlier in the season. “Very good passer and it has been fun so far. We are going to just continue to get better.” Finally, Provorov appeared to have a capable partner to lead the rush of the ice, and make quick zone exits. Provorov looked more like himself, and it was a thing of beauty to watch.
When looking at the play of Provorov both last season and the 2020-21 season, it’s clear the defenseman wasn’t at his best, neither was the team in general. Coupled with Provorov’s high ice time and usually starting his shifts in the defensive zone. It’s only going to make a defenseman who logs a lot of ice time have less than ideal statistics. We’re not even factoring that his defensive partner has been an influx for approximately two years, finally it appeared Provorov had a true number one defenseman playing alongside him, an offensive defenseman at that. However, then the wheels started to fall off the bus as little over a quarter way into the season with DeAngelo’s bad habits of being out of position, or always looking to engage offensively. What that did was make the Flyers that much easier to beat with giving more space for their opponents to create, thus being out of position 9 times out of 10 for a goal against.
Like John Tortorella has done effectively in the past was politely call out his defenseman a few weeks ago, “We want to try to help him,” Tortorella said. “We feel he needs to get better defensively, without taking away any of the great offensive ability he has.”
Since then, DeAngelo has since been relegated to the bottom pairing, while being paired with Nick Seeler. The Flyers had to do their due diligence with obtaining a Shayne Gostisbehere “Ghost” esque defensman. They wanted DeAngelo to provide offense and Power Play numbers, while being just “Ok” defensively. That doesn’t sit well with Tortorella, and you know what spearing Corey Perry sure doesn’t help this matter:
Regardless of who the player is, in this case a known agitator like Perry. No one deserves to be stabbed. DeAngelo was rightfully suspended for two games by the NHL player Safety Department today, as he sought out Perry and stabbed him with a stick blade. He sought out Perry, after not being involved in the scrum, and the video of the incident above proves this.
“He tried to slash my hands right before that,” DeAngelo said last night. “He talks all game. I ask him to fight, he says no. He asked me to fight for years I don’t say no. There’s not much of an argument there. I wasn’t trying to give him a shot. Replay makes it look worse than it’s meant to be. It is what it is. I took 30 punches to the ground, when I get up they don’t let me do what I want to do. It’s whatever.”
To DeAngelo’s credit, he has been playing better defensively, but he cannot allow players to get under his skin. Tortorella has a unique, creative way of getting his message across to players. A player can take that with a grain of salt or move on, and most choose the latter.
As bad as the past 2 seasons have been, Tony Deangelo spearing a player in the groin well after the whistle blew is the most embarrassing moment. It was a total disgrace. Torts should have been furious about a player taking a 5-minute major penalty with the team only down by 2 with 3-minutes to go in the game. Deangelo decided that his personal feuds were more important than the team. And then Deangelo acted like a smug clown after the game. Total embarrassment. It was a dirty play that doesn’t belong in the game.