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Is Tony DeAngelo roasting fans on Twitter with a burner account?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - FEBRUARY 25: Tony DeAngelo #77 of the New York Rangers skates against the New York Islanders at NYCB Live's Nassau Coliseum on February 25, 2020 in Uniondale, New York. The Rangers defeated the Islanders 4-3 in overtime. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Very-online New York Rangers defenseman Tony DeAngelo supposedly left Twitter earlier this month after former President Donald Trump was banned from the platform.

But, in a glorious twist of fate for those of us suckers heavily invested in this tremendous content, it appears the blueliner may have returned to the social networking app — in sweet, sweet “burner” form.

We know by now that droves of athletes and executives, and famous people in general, use or have been accused of using incognito social media accounts to more freely participate in online conversation, but it’s still so delightful every time one is actually uncovered because of the sheer, next-level pettiness and hilariousness of it all.

This time the burner saga hit the hockey world and the NHL social community rallied extra hard over this one. Here’s what we know:

A profile with a New York Rangers avatar named NYRFan92360244 (of course) replied to a comment saying “Get Deangelo off this team” with “Not his fault.” It was the first to tweet to come from the account at just after 9:40 p.m. ET Friday evening.

In response to a Deadspin writer who tweeted that the “the rangers definitely lost” because DeAngelo was trending on twitter after the game, the suspected burner responded: “Real f*****g funny dbag. Instead of taking cheap shots at a player you should get off the couch and trying going out there yourself.”

Throughout Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday morning, this account — either Tony D himself or some absolutely beloved/crazed fan just trying to have the blueliners back online — dropped a whole bunch of fishy tweets in an internet rampage for the ages.

As “NYRFan” defended DeAngelo (or HIMSELF?) from internet meanies, the detectives came out in full force concluding it to be DeAngelo behind the newly-created account.

These accusations were vehemently denied by “NYRFan92360244” with a tweet that was still pinned to the top of his profile at time of this important writing:

Noble endeavor, sure. Simply a good ol’ Blueshirts fanatic defending one of their own, right? Not so fast. Hockey Twitter went DEEP to expose this dude and as usual did not disappoint with its guerilla investigative work.

Two users in particular took this account to the cleaners, with “nathancsn” falsely claiming to pull source code from the tweet exposing DeAngelo’s location, with other users quickly pointing out it was just a ploy to stir a reaction from the alleged burner — which it did.

Three straight replies came rolling in, which read, “What the f**k is this?” followed by, “You’re a liar,” and ending with, “How did you do this?”

How very strange!

Then it was “aelanK” dropping another bomb:

The user claims to have sent the suspected burner an “ip grabber link and he clicked it immediately.”

After denying claims of photoshopping or forging the photos with a pretty reasonable explanation, the user wrote:

“One final note that should be obvious: of course there’s no way to guarantee it's him! i sent a link to the account and they clicked it immediately and it showed downtown pittsburgh. that + the tweets? pretty reasonable to assume identity lol. have a lovely day.”

If that last one isn’t fake, then it’s pretty hard to not conclude this was indeed DeAngelo behind this burner, but that of course is a big “if” in this age of Bad Internet Stuff.

Think that just about covers it for now. We may never truly know if this is Tony D himself or not, but I promise you I will update the heck out of this article if or when new details trickle out.

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