Almost a month has passed since one of the KHL’s most talked-about signings in recent years, when Tony DeAngelo arrived at SKA St. Petersburg. Players of this status rarely come to our league, and the American defender moved to Russia at an advanced age – on October 24 he will turn only 29 years old. It’s hard to believe that Tony’s reasons for leaving the NHL so soon were purely gambling: his skills would still allow him to be in the top 4 of most teams in the strongest league in the world, and in some clubs he would be able to Play the role of an outstanding offensive defender.
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However, since late September, DeAngelo has delighted audiences in the Northern capital and has done so fairly consistently. After the first nine games in the military jersey, the American scored up to 15 points: Tony scored twice and helped his teammates score 13 more times. Three of these 15 effective actions occurred in the defender’s debut match against Severstal; DeAngelo then scored an assist hat-trick, becoming the first player in SKA history to achieve this figure in his first game with the club.
His “+6” after the meeting with Cherepovets also became a record: not a single army hockey player had ever finished a match with such a usefulness indicator before, and together with Deangelo this was achieved by his teammate Andrei Pedan, whom It was largely thanks to the efforts of his old friend from the Canadian junior team and he came off the ice with four assists.
Tony gives the team exactly what could be expected of him upon his arrival. In the person of the American, SKA received an excellent reinforcement for its already powerful offensive arsenal, which adds variety to the team’s game thanks to the correct grip (and not only, but we will talk about that later): Nikita Zaitsev was not up to par. height. task, so the signing of DeAngelo turned out to be very important for the military team.
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However, there are questions about the use of this gain: Tony appears on the same majority team with Alexander Nikishin and, more recently, has also been paired with him in equal compositions. Even before Roman Rotenberg began to use the two best SKA defenders together, the very idea of the possible emergence of this combination on a permanent basis seemed very strange: there was no question of any kind of balance, the search for which the SKA coach army speaks habitually.
This can be seen when playing with too many players: Nikishin and DeAngelo often pass and change positions, without creating any real urgency, and the second special team, consisting of five forwards, is deprived of a person capable of holding the line blue, and when playing in equal compositions: game In the Brazilian system, SKA is not always successful, and there is simply no support for two attack-oriented defenders, which leads to “disadvantages” as in the recent army derby.
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In nine games, Tony has already accumulated 10 “minuses”, that is, on average, SKA concedes a little more than one goal per game when he is on the court. But this figure could be even higher, because DeAngelo, to put it mildly, is imperfect in the game in front of his own goal, and sometimes it is his mistakes that lead to dangerous moments in favor of the rivals from St. Petersburg. Fortunately for Tony, many of those moments are lost “thanks” to the other side’s lack of skill, or are neutralized by the saves of the goalkeeper, who at that time had not yet lost the trust of Roman Rotenberg in a single match. At the same time, its overall usefulness indicator is “+9”.
The coaching staff’s decision to pair Nikishin and DeAngelo only increased the risk of such mistakes being made and made the gap between the quality of the defensive pairings too wide. Furthermore, he has not yet taken the burden off of Alexander, who practically never leaves the site.
But even this doesn’t stop the American from constantly earning points. Only once did he play without scoring and on two more occasions he only added one point to his personal treasure; the other six games for him always ended up being games of at least two points.
Evgeny Kuznetsov and Tony DeAngelo
Photo: Ilya Smirnov, foto.khl.ru
And Tony writes his name on the protocol with apparent ease, as if it cost him nothing to create a dangerous situation at someone else’s door. Quick decision-making, soft hands, excellent court vision and sense of control (DeAngelo practically does not lower his head when in possession of the puck) mark him as a player of the highest level, who may well not be limited to one or two effective actions per game in the KHL.
More recently, we saw Trevor Murphy approach the all-time scoring record for a defenseman and come within a whisker of taking the lead. There is a feeling that this record will continue to fall: DeAngelo has had at least one assist in the last six games and could be on the verge of joining Murphy, Chris Lee, Kirill Koltsov and Darren Dietz, if not for the game in Minsk. . And the best single-season scoring record (65) is now also in serious danger.
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DeAngelo only needs to score 51 points in the remaining 51 regular season games to become the sole record holder. And who, after their first month at SKA, can say with complete certainty that this is impossible?
