Report Card for Rangers Star Sean "Puckface" Avery's Return to the NHL

Is Sean Avery a star or a superstar? It's time for a report card for "Puckface."

Now that he has played 17 games in the NHL, plus six in the AHL, it is time to give Sean Avery a report card. We don't have to wait for the Rangers' final game of the regular season to ask the question: Has his return to hockey been successful?

The Rangers were in a skid that took them from first to worst of the teams in the playoff picture, and then dropped them right out of the top eight in the Eastern Conference. Avery was not the only reason they turned things around, but he was definitely a big part of it.

The Rangers are 10-6-1, since Avery's return, and Avery is 16-6-1 since returning to hockey, if we add his AHL and NHL games.

In 17 games with the Rangers, he has four goals and seven assists for 11 points. He had two goals and one assist with the Wolf Pack. That gives him six goals and eight assists for 14 points in 23 games.

If he played a full season for the Rangers, that might have meant about 24 goals and 30 or so assists, or 75 points.

That would put him in the top two dozen point-getters in the NHL this year, along with Alexander Semin of the Washington Capitals, Eric Staal of the Carolina Hurricanes, and Vyacheslav Kozlov of the Atlanta Thrashers, and ahead of everyone else on the Rangers.

He is a plus three in the +/- category and has just 28 penalty minutes. In a full season with the Rangers, he might have had 120 penalty minutes, like Ryan Getzlaf.

Some will say I'm insane for projecting those kind of statistics for Avery as he has never scored more than 15 goals in one season since he played Jr. A for the Kingston Frontenacs, and has never had more than 30 assists or 75 points since then, either.

He had 28 goals and 56 assists for 84 points in his final year in the NHL. He is now 28 years old and, who knows, he could have had the best season of his career if he had stayed with the Rangers this year.

His best season so far was last year with the Rangers, when he had 15 goals and 18 assists for 33 points, with a +6 and 154 PIMS. He had 15 goals and 24 assists for 39 points with the Los Angeles Kings, but was -5 and had 257 PIMS.

He has a different role with the Rangers this year. In the past, he was expected to fight more. In his new role, he is expected to fight less and score more.

Like the NHL, Avery is evolving. Hockey villains are not wanted in the new NHL, apparently. Avery-haters have a hard time seeing him in the role of hockey hero. But who set up the game-winning goal that got the Rangers into the playoffs?

Statistics don't tell the whole story. How about some anecdotal evidence? John Mackinnon, writing for the Canwest News Service, describes Avery this way: "Avery has been a focused, useful presence on the ice and a model citizen off it."

He adds, "Of course, even a well-behaved Avery is a pain to play against, and the same may well hold true for the on-the-rise Rangers as a whole this spring.

He says the New York Rangers could upset a team or two in the playoffs for three compelling reasons: goalie Henrik Lundqvist, head coach John Tortorella, and agitator Sean Avery.

On the other hand, Avery has a lot of critics. He is the kind of hockey player Rangers fans love and other fans love to hate, his team loves and other teams hate, and some sports writers despise and others tolerate.

Since his return to hockey this year, Avery has been called a clown, a jerk, an idiot, a pest, superpest, and king of the agitators. He has also been called a Zen robot, Zenlike, a Zen master, a Zen Machiavelli, and Deepak Chopra on skates.

Many have given Avery credit for making a positive difference to the Rangers, but some have called him a disgrace to hockey. A mysterious influence called The Avery Effect has been praised by the Rangers' writers.

In his worst game, against Boston, he got in trouble for annoying a goalie. The tap he gave to the helmet of Tim Thomas became a shot heard around the hockey world. In his best game, he got two goals against the Flyers, and was named the first star in NBC's Game of the Week.

In that game, Avery got a Gordie Howe hat-trick, including an unofficial dime, plus a couple of hits, and he drew a few penalties, too.

He has fought twice. His first fight, with Cal Clutterbuck of the Minnesota Wild, who leads the league in penalties, got great reviews. His last fight got mixed reviews.

Avery coaxed New Jersey Devils defenseman Brian Clarkson into hurling him around the ice like a rag doll. Avery did not fight back. As a result, the Rangers went on a power play with under five minutes remaining in the game.

Analysts went back and forth about whether Avery did the “right” thing, or how the man-up situation that followed allowed the Rangers to essentially run out the clock and gain a pair of much-needed points.

The Rangers promoted him from the third line to the first line. He gets more and more ice-time. He is a fan favorite in Madison Square Garden, with Rangers fans chanting his name. In other arenas, they "boo" him every time he touches the puck.

Avery has a new role with the Rangers, but he was punished for his old reputation for his first 12 or 13 games, as referees appeared to look the other way while other teams lined up to hit him hard or take cheap shots on him.

Even Sidney Crosby hit him from behind. Steve Zipay, who writes Blue Notes for Newsday, said Avery was treated like a pinata he was hit so often.

Statistics show Avery delivered lots of hits, but there are no stats to show the huge number of hits he has taken.

Has his return to hockey been successful?

The answer to that question has to be YES. Has he changed? Is he a changed man? It looks like it.

He has kept a low profile with reporters, cut down on penalties incredibly, and there have been no complaints about how he gets along with the team in the locker room.

The Dallas Stars are still blaming him for their problems at the start of the season, but they struggled all year and ended the season out of the playoffs.

Is he now a star with the Rangers, or is he a superstar in the NHL? Well, he isn't Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, or Alexander Ovechkin. He isn't Jaromir Jagr.

On the other hand, when have you heard anybody refer to his team as someone else's? Is it billed as Chris Drury and the New York Rangers, or even Henrik Lundqvist and the Rangers? No. It's Sean Avery and the Revamped Rangers.

The Rangers brought Avery back because he was a fan favorite, and a GM favorite, even though he was the opposite of the coach's favorite. They brought him back to add spirit and swagger, to supply toughness, because he was a villain and they were vanilla, and the Rangers record was so much better when he was in the lineup.

They expected Avery to show the Rangers how to play like New Yorkers.

He did all that and he scored some goals, too. He scored points with his coach, as well. Torotorella turned 180 degrees on Avery, going from saying he shouldn't be in the NHL to calling him "outstanding".

How's that for a progress report?

Don Cherry still says he is a jerk, but other broadcasters claim he has been the Rangers' best forward in the stretch run. I think it's safe to say, at the very least, Avery is a star with the Rangers and possibly THE star of the Rangers. 

Vinny Madio, writing for Bleacher Report, said "the biggest reason the Rangers are even in the hunt now is Sean Avery."

"Like him or hate him, you have to admit that when Avery dons a Ranger sweater, he makes the team better. Whether it's in front of the goalie or running his mouth from the bench, he is fun to watch if you are a Ranger fan, and he always gives it is all," Madio said.

The B/R writer even suggested Avery should be the Rangers' captain. "While he might not be captain material due to his attitude and his so called "shenanigans" (as the announcing team on Versus loves to say), he is a true leader because he gets the team going," he wrote in a recent column.

Avery has had an incredible year, going from the Rangers to Vogue, and Men's Vogue to the Dallas Stars, from anger management to the Wolf Pack, and back to the Rangers.

It looked like his hockey career was over, for a while, or he would wind up playing in the KHL for some team in Siberia. He came out of anger management with a Gap ad, a movie deal, and an invitation to rejoin his favorite team, the New York Rangers.

Since his return to New York, his team has turned around, Avery has been invited to be a partner in a new sports bar in Manhattan, the movie based on his Men's Vogue column, about being an intern at Vogue, and is in the works with New Line Cinema, with the working title "Puckface".

Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow, is a character in Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, based on an ancient figure in English mythology, also called Puck. Robert Sean Leonard played Puck in a high-school production of AMND, depicted in the film Dead Poets Society.

Puck is a clever and mischievous elf, a trickster and jester. Puckface is also the name of a hockey blog.

In addition to all that, Avery reportedly made Jennifer Anniston's list of athletes to date, along with David Wright of the New York Mets and Derek Jeter, captain of the New York Yankees.

I would say that all adds up to the kind of comeback that could make Avery the Rocky of hockey, and it's fair to say it is Puckface who is leading the Rangers into the playoffs.