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NHL

Sean Avery, Rangers Need Each Other

Posted Feb 06, 2009 2:45PM By Bruce Ciskie (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Rangers, Stars, Eastern, Western, NHL Rumors

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We all know his history. He got the NHL to change a rule in the middle of a playoff series last year, simply by being a complete pest. The NHL suspended him six games for a sex joke, and he hasn't played in the league since.

Before his ill-fated time in Dallas, however, Sean Avery had a highly successful run as a Ranger, and was a big part of a Ranger team that got to the second round of last year's Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Months have passed since the last Avery dust-up, and it's soon going to be time for the Stars to work with Avery and figure out what the next step is. I doubt that he's going to just retire. He's going to want to play hockey.

Could he make a return to the Rangers?
The Rangers have conducted thorough internal discussions regarding the feasibility of bringing Sean Avery back to Broadway and appear to be on the verge of allowing Dallas to send Hockey's Public Enemy No. 1 to Hartford in what would be the first step of the process, The Post has learned.

The organizational meetings included management personnel, coaches and players. They yielded a consensus that Avery's return to the Rangers is very much worth pursuing and that his injection into the lineup this season would be a constructive move.
This actually makes sense, on many levels. Why? Well, for a big part of the reason, I'll go back to Larry Brooks' report.
This year's Rangers are 29-18-5, but 0-2-1 in their last three games. They are widely perceived as a vanilla team that's a walk in the park as an opponent. They won't be either of those things once Avery comes back home again.
I'm not here to deify Sean Avery. I'm not quite that insane.

However, there is no question in my mind the Rangers were a better team with Avery than they've been without him. He does all the little things that don't get in the paper. He goes in the corners. He goes to the net. He protects his teammates, and he's not afraid of jumping into a scrum to do so.

He's the kind of player who can make a difference on a playoff team without scoring a gaggle of game-winning goals.

In short, he's the kind of player the Rangers need. They aren't milquetoast with Sean Avery around. They're the exact opposite. As we saw last year, that's a good thing.

(Yeah, I know they "only" got to the second round. They could have had Ovechkin on the team and still not beaten the Penguins in the second round.)

The need is not exclusive to the Rangers. It's easy to say that Sean Avery needs a job. He does. He also needs to be somewhere he's wanted and understood. I'm not sure how understood he was in the locker room last year, but I have little doubt that Avery was a better fit with the Rangers than he was with the Stars.

If Brooks' report has any truth to it, the list of teams that actually would like to have Avery around right about now isn't very long.

The New York Rangers.

Avery was able to avoid getting in hot water with the league (except for the Brodeur flap in the playoffs). While he'll always be a controversial figure, his time in New York was relatively tame.

If he can pull that off again, it would be to the benefit of everyone.

Except Martin Brodeur.

Tags: martin+brodeur, MartinBrodeur, sean+avery, SeanAvery

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