Why You Shouldn't Miss Sean Avery

As per usual, the Rangers faithful at the Garden latched on to a guy who was a bit of, well… a prick. Sean Avery came to the Rangers and everything he touched turned to gold for a while. When he arrived near the trade deadline in 2007, the Rangers were floundering and were a ways out of the playoffs. They were in one of those, “Hey, if we just play .650 hockey from here on out…” situations… only they actually then did just that and secured the 6-seed. Avery’s arrival coincided with that and his energetic, bombastic style of play seemed to wake the Rangers up.

Whether it did or not is, of course, immaterial. The fans loved him and he ate it up. Sometimes he crossed the line but for the most part he was good for the Rangers that year.

Then the ’07 offseason happened and Sean Avery began to become a pain in the ass, forcing arbitration and acting like he was a schoolgirl with hurt feelings when the Rangers tried to get him at a better rate than he wanted.

And then the ’07-’08 season happened, and Avery continued to be a royal pain in the ass, especially getting under the skin of Marty Brodeur. Now, I’m all for messing with Marty and if you can get in his head and get him off his game, you’re doing something right. But Avery seemed to be pushing things almost too far… to the point where he was risking Henrik getting run by some goon from the opposition. Now that’s not good. Pissing off Marty is one thing – running into him repeatedly is another.

And then the playoffs…where Avery’s antics actually caused the league to change the unsportsmanlike conduct rules in the middle of a playoff series. Sure, there are those who sided with the league (most people think Avery’s an a-hole) but let’s make no mistake here – the league was out of line on that one. Colin Campbell decided he didn’t like Sean Avery and he did like Marty Brodeur and so he changed the rules. Absolutely ridiculous. And then even more ridiculous was when one of the Pens players did the same stick-in-the-face-but-I’m-not-touching-you routine during the second-round series and it wasn’t called. But I digress.

The point is, Avery was becoming a distraction to the Rangers. He wasn’t a locker room problem just yet, but you could see it coming. It was only a matter of time before the whole Eastern Conference decided it was tired of his act and stopped letting it bother them. I’m frankly amazed it worked as well as it did for as long as it did… but again, that wasn’t going to last forever.

Now he’s off to Dallas to antagonize the West again. Sure, it’ll work for a while. But will the Rangers miss him? Was his 15-20 goals and occasional penalty-drawing worth the fact that he also took a lot of frustrating penalties (i.e., diving) and might have been a few months away from becoming a locker room cancer that was simply untradeable? I don’t think so.

I think it’s good riddance, Sean. You were good for a while and served a useful purpose. However, the act was wearing thin quickly and I’m fine with the Rangers not having the NHL’s number 1 villain.