NHL's No. 1 Villain's New Role: Sean Avery Plays Spiderman Dark

I’m so sorry, Spidey, but Sean Avery is taking on your persona.

He has changed from the Green Goblin into something resembling Spiderman Dark, as in the movie Spiderman 3 and the game Spiderman Dark Side or maybe he is more like the Dark Knight.

In Spiderman 3, Peter Parker has finally managed to piece together the once-broken parts of his life, maintaining a balance between his relationship with Mary Jane and his responsibility as Spiderman.

In Sean Avery 3.0, the No. 1 hockey villain has pieced together the once-broken parts of his life, after anger management, to get the right balance between his role as King of the Agitators or “Superpest,” and hockey hero with the New York Rangers.

In Spiderman 3, with the help of the black suit, Peter is victorious in a brutal fight.

Influenced by the suit, Peter does some dark things.

In Dark Knight, the 2008 superhero film, Batman is forced to deal with the chaos unleashed by an anarchist mastermind known only as the Joker, and it drives him to his dark side.

Some fans still think of Avery as Batman’s archenemy, the Joker.

Played by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger in Batman and Dark Knight, the Joker is portrayed as a master criminal, a violent sociopath and a goofy trickster-thief.

The Joker fell into a vat of chemical waste, which bleached his skin, turned his hair green and his lips bright red, giving him the appearance of a clown.

Many have wondered about Avery’s role as a hockey villain.

Brett Hull said he was like the Green Goblin and that persona took control of him.

Why did he play the role of the villain?

Nobody asked him to play the role of hockey hero, since he played Junior A in the OHL, until this month.

Avery’s Junior A hockey team, the Owen Sound Platers, already had several hockey heroes when he made the jump from minor hockey to the top league supplying hockey players to the NHL.

The Platers already had players drafted by the NHL and a star with the junior Team Canada in Ryan Brunette, Adam Maier and Jamie Storr—not to mention Dan Snyder.

What role was left for Avery to play as a rookie in the OHL?
 
When Avery joined the Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings as an un-drafted Junior A player, his team was loaded with hockey heroes, including Brendan Shanahan, Sergei Fedorov, Brett Hull, Nicklas Lidstrom, Luc Robitaille, Steve Yzerman, Igor Larionov, Chris Chelios, Pavel Datsyuk, Kris Draper, Boyd Devereaux, Kirk Maltby and Dominik Hasek.

What role was left for Avery to play as a rookie in the NHL?

When Avery was traded to the Kings, they had a couple of hockey heroes in Luc Robitaille and Jeremy Roenick.

Mostly, that team had to fight for their lives and that was when Avery led the league in penalties for two seasons.

When Avery was traded to the New York Rangers, they had Jaromir Jagr, Martin Straka, Brendan Shanahan, Scott Gomez, Chris Drury and Henry Lundqvist.

What role did they want Avery to play?

When Avery went to the Dallas Stars, they had Brenden Morrow, Mike Ribeiro and Marty Turco. The already had Steve Ott as their agitator.

When Avery rejoined the Rangers, their big heroes, Jagra, Shanahan and Straka, were gone.

They were counting on Drury and Gomez to step up and they added Markus Naslund.

They already had Colton Orr as their enforcer.

Maybe the Rangers went into a slump.

Some say there is a syndrome that makes hockey heroes fades away once they join the Rangers.

The Rangers brought Avery back from oblivion for a reason.

The NHL wanted Avery to stop playing the role of the villain, while the Rangers wanted him to rejoin their team in a different role.

Not even Brett Hull wanted Avery to be the Green Goblin anymore.

Avery was assigned the role of third line agitator, at first, but he was re-assigned after a few games.

Ranger’s coach, Tortorella, promoted Avery to the first line, where he was expected to help the Rangers re-awaken their scoring.

He responded with a goal a game for three games, with a two-goal performance that had him named first star of the game in the NBC’s Game of The Week, which the Rangers won over the Philadelphia Flyers.

The Flyers tried hard to engage Avery in fights, expecting him to retaliate, fight and wind up in the sin bin.

He surprised them in his new role of first line scorer—instead of a hockey villain; he had turned into a hockey hero.

Nobody is saying Avery is a hockey hero like Sid Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Evgeny Malkin or even Pavel Datsyuk, Zach Prise and Ilya Kovalchuk, but Avery is no longer a villain, apparently.

He is a hockey hero like no other I can think of.

He’s a hero like the Dark Knight or Spiderman after he discovered his dark side.