Lamoriello brought him back from Russia<\/a> on Jan. 24, 2025 with injuries thinning the Islanders’ defense corps. In the year since, the Islanders have come to value DeAngelo as a beloved teammate and steady presence in their lineup, comprising a second pair with Adam Pelech.<\/p>\n\u201cTony\u2019s been great,\u201d captain Anders Lee told Newsday. \u201cIt was seamless last year, seamless this year. Veteran guy. He\u2019s played hockey in different parts of the world. He\u2019s seen a lot, he\u2019s been through a lot. There\u2019s a maturity that comes from that. He\u2019s been a phenomenal teammate, a good friend and I love hanging out with him. I\u2019m so happy he\u2019s on our team. He\u2019s not afraid to call it like it is and it\u2019s refreshing.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeAngelo knew what others in the NHL thought of him as he headed to the KHL. In Lamoriello, he found an executive willing to see who DeAngelo believed himself to be. He had four goals and 15 assists in 35 games last season \u2013 joining the Islanders because of injuries to defensemen Noah Dobson and Mike Reilly \u2013 and new GM Mathieu Darche re-signed him to a one-year, $1.75 million deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, depending on how I played, it could have been a three-week run,\u201d DeAngelo told Newsday. \u201cI remember talking to my parents about it when I was deciding between here and another team, \u2018I could go to the Islanders and guys are coming back in three weeks and it could be a roster crunch. I don\u2019t know what the hell is going to happen.\u2019 But I really, really, really liked Lou and that\u2019s why I ultimately decided to come here. So, a year in, it\u2019s been great, more than I could have asked for.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeAngelo and Lamoriello had some honest conversations about DeAngelo\u2019s past \u2013 and the perception of him \u2013 before agreeing to a deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were different reasons that they weren\u2019t willing to sign me, some teams, that I disagreed with,\u201d DeAngelo said. \u201cBut Lou is one of the only guys that actually sat down with me and gave me a chance to chat it out and see if he had any interest in signing me. I told every team before, \u2018If you have any worries, if you sign me, if I do anything wrong I\u2019ll terminate my own contract. I don\u2019t care about your money. I just want to play.\u2019 I made my agent [Pat Brisson]\u00a0put that out there at the time and still nobody bought.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m grateful to be here and I\u2019m loyal to this organization now as well. I\u2019m hoping to stay here for a while longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
But DeAngelo quickly clarified there have been no negotiations yet with Darche on a potential extension.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t gone down that path,\u201d DeAngelo said. \u201cI\u2019m just focused on playing as well as I can. I had a bad preseason. I had a bad first 10 games. The last 40 games I\u2019ve gotten back to my game and I\u2019m feeling good.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeAngelo did not play in the Islanders\u2019 3-1 win over the visiting Flyers on the day he signed \u2013 Dennis Cholowski, now a depth piece for the Devils, and Isaiah George, currently with the Islanders\u2019 AHL affiliate in Bridgeport \u2013 were in the lineup.<\/p>\n
But DeAngelo made his Islanders debut logging 25:07 in a 3-2 overtime win over the visiting Hurricanes on Jan. 25, 2025. He recorded his first assist for the team in the next game against the Avalanche and scored his first Islanders goal in overtime of a 3-2 road victory over the Lightning on Feb. 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe stepped in right away, on the ice, off the ice,\u201d defenseman Ryan Pulock told Newsday. \u201cHe really grew his game. This year he\u2019s been really steady for us. He\u2019s been a big addition to our team.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769194644_855_image.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
\n\tAndrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John\u2019s and MLB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s perception and then there\u2019s the actual person and hockey player. All Tony DeAngelo asked from the Islanders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5,122,3328,159,5190,5189,4,17424],"class_list":["post-424067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-islanders","tag-hockey","tag-islanders","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-islanders","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkislanders","tag-nhl","tag-oin"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115945947319690082","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}