Just my opinion, but they faced the choice of filling time with a suspenseful "who's the Russian going to kill and how next?" device, or a pointless plot line about the travails of a 400 pound homosexual capo who is found out, moves to Vermont and buys an antique shop, has a brief affair with a local fireman whose entire crew are seemingly bent, and then gets tracked down and tragically impaled on a broom handle by an offended in law who happens to be with one of the NY families (played, by coincidence, by the "go get your shine box" guy from
Good Fella's).
That they chose the latter tells you everything you may ever have wanted to know about Hollywood.