Sean Avery: Superstar?

(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Sean Avery now has five points in five games, and it looked like five goals, but one that was first given to him was later turned into an assist.

His line controls the puck and he is always in the centre of the action. Reporters write about "The Avery Effect." Is he turning into a superstar?

Avery got the superstar treatment from the NBC on the Game Of The Week two weekends in a row. The Rangers won hard-fought victories over the Boston Bruins, 4-3, and the Philadelphia Flyers, 4-1.

NBC followed Avery with the starcam so TV viewers saw a lot of him and Rangers fans could watch his every move on the NBC website.

"Sean Avery shook up the Philadelphia Flyers with his grit and his gift of gab. And just when they had enough of that, he beat them with his stick," the Boston Herald reported.

"With a national TV spotlight on him, and a fired-up home crowd adoring his every agitating move, Avery scored two power-play goals and drew a pair of penalties to lead the Rangers..."

Although NBC gave him the superstar treatment, nobody has called him a superstar, yet. Avery has not said he is or will be or wants to be the star of the team.

Even so, the headlines say "Avery And The Rangers" or "Avery's Rangers". It may not be the same as when they say Ovechckin and the Capitals" or "Crosby and the Penguins" or "Crosby and Malkin and the Penguins" or "Brodeur and the Devils."

Google any NHL team and you'll find a headline identifying each hockey club with an individual player. It's Vincent Lacavalier and the Tampa Bay Lightning, Mark Recchi and the Boston Bruins, and so on.

Not all the others are household names, like Crosby, Malkin, Ovechkin, Brodeur, and Avery.

Last year, it was Jaromir Jagr and the Rangers. This year it was supposed to be Drury and Gomez and the Rangers. Avery joined the team when they were called "vanilla" and now they aren't.

It is not because Avery is a superstar like Crosby, Ovechkin, Malkin, and Brodeur. It is because the New York team's identity is linked with his. Avery returned to the Rangers and reminded them how to swagger.

Avery's name is inextricably linked with Martin Brodeur's by The Avery Rule, after the first round of the playoffs last year, and that's part of the story.

Another part of the story is the fact that Avery is a celebrity who has crossed over from hockey into the worlds of high fashion and Hollywood movies thanks to his work with Vogue and Men's Vogue, a Gap ad, an appearance in a hockey movie as "Killer" dill, and the movie that's in the works based on the hockey player's experience at Vogue.

It's his on-ice personality and off-ice celebrity status that gives him and the Rangers their new identity.

Rangers fans in New York City are hip to the jazzy changes in the former penalties leader but elsewhere in the NHL they still think of Avery as the superpest and King of the Agitators.

They did not get the memo that Avery has changed since his time with the Dallas Stars, anger management, his comeback to hockey with the Hartford Wolf Pack in the AHL, and his return to the Rangers in the NHL.

Some fans are just waiting for Avery to snap and retaliate to the pounding he is taking from opponents or the response of the referees, or lack of it, expecting him to attack someone viciously, both physically and verbally.

There is something about Avery's old persona that attracted boos and it has not gone away, yet. Columns I've written about him for Bleacher Report attract offensive that make me understand a little what it must like to be him.

Apparently, some hockey fans do not like the story about the former superpest and agitator being turned into a hockey hero, possibly even a superstar, right before our eyes.

If Avery keeps scoring at the pace of the past five games, stays away from the sin-bin, and gets named star of the game again and again, his new identity will eventually be recognized.

He is already a fan favourite with the Rangers Faithful at Madison Square Garden and, apparently, with NBC TV. If the trend continues, every athlete and every man in North America will be signing up for anger management.

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