Sean Avery as an Archetypal Symbol of Hope and Change—or Bartman

As Avery starts his comeback with the New York Rangers in the NHL, he could be seen as the Rocky of hockey. The question is what kind of Comeback Kid is Sean Avery? Is Avery an Everyman, or is he Superman, Batman, Spiderman, or BartMan? Or is he something more sophisticated?

Sports, especially hockey, has few figures like Sean Avery.

He's a celebrity unlike other famous hockey players as he has crossed over into the worlds of fashion and Hollywood.

The NHL's No. 1 bad boy, voted most hated hockey player, by NHLers, and voted one of the sexiest men alive by People magazine. He's called superpest and king of the agitators and he was guest editor at Men's Vogue. He dated Hollywood actress Elisha Cuthbert and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Rachel Hunter. He's been in 53 fights on the ice and led the league in penalties for two years.

He's complicated. He's a skating contradiction, partly fact and partly fiction.

Avery says he plays the role of villain on the ice and has give the NHL brass cold hell for not marketing hockey as a game with popular villains as well as hockey heroes like Crosby and Ovechkin. The NHL tried to turn the villain into a hero by sending him to anger management.

Avery can be seen as an Everyman figure because he is just 5'10" and 195 pounds, or an average size. However, he's willing to take on the biggest, toughest, trash talking, enforcer in the NHL today, like some kind of Superman.

Like Batman, he is part of the folklore of Gotham City credited with showing the Rangers how to play like New Yorkers.

Like Spiderman, he has a dark side, apparently, and sometimes it seems to take over.

He's got a bad attitude, like Bart Simpson's alter ego, BartMan.

On the ice, he plays the role of a villain like The Joker, particularly when he plays against Crosby and the Penguins.

He's not like Daffy Duck when he plays against the Anaheim Ducks, but he has been called Daffy. He plays more like Taz, the whiling dirvish from Tasmania, also known as the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil.

Playing against the New Jersey Devils last year in the playoffs, he was more annoying than Daffy Duck, driving their goalie, Martin Brodeur to distraction.

Avery was Brodeur's nemesis, his arch-rival, but what archetype fits him best?

He was kicked out of the NHL, which is hockey heaven, went to hell and back, or at least purgatory, when he was suspended indefinitely and not invited back.

He was declared dead when he was sent to a hospital in New York after a second round playoff game against the Penguins last season. He was reborn as a Vogue intern and Gap model with a movie deal.

Larry Bird was called Basketball Jesus, but nobody wanted to be called Hockey Jesus in the last decade, or during the Bush era. And Avery is not the Larry Bird of hockey.

Avery is best known as the nemesis of one of the Devils and his stint at Vogue made everybody think of the movie and novel called The Devil Wears Prada.

What villain fights devils to the death, almost, and is born again as Deepak Chopra on skates?

Avery spent several games in the AHL, playing his way into game shape, for a return to the NHL with the Rangers. He hopes to get back in the game at the top level and they hope he can spark their talent rich team into action, again.

Bad Boy Sean Avery may seem like an unlikely candidate for playing the role of a symbol of hope and change.

But his timing is right, and timing is everything, they say, in the world of theater.

At the end of the Bush era, and the start of the Obama years, America and the world is full of hope for change.

Faced with a global economic meltdown and global warming, which might trigger the next Ice Age, President Obama soldiers on, apparently undaunted.

All Avery has to do is kickstart the slumping Rangers and save their season so they don't miss the playoffs. Is this a job for Everyman or will it take a Superman.

At 5'10", Avery is the same height as Sylvester Stallone, famous for Rambo and Rocky. Maybe Avery was Rambo, before, and now, making a comeback, he is Rocky.

Rambo was reborn in a sense in a Buddhist monastery.

Did Avery study Zen Buddhist meditation while in Anger Management?

Rocky made one comeback after another as the underdog taking on giants, like David fighting Goliaths.

Avery has fought everyone in the NHL from Darcy Tucker to Dion Phaneuf.

He's a good fighter, but he's a much better agitator or instigator.

It's hard to say what he is.

In French, there's a term which cannot be translated into English, due to cultural differences. Avery is an animateur—someone who animates or brings thing to life, or brings life to things.