A Day in the Life of Chris Drury and Sean Avery with Abba and Solzhenitsyn

"I don't wanna talk
About the things we've gone through
Though it's hurting me
Now it's history
I've played all my cards
And that's what you've done too
Nothing more to say
No more ace to play

"The winner takes it all
The loser standing small
Beside the victory ...."
—from Winner Take It All, by Abba

"Live with a steady superiority over life—don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing."
—from One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals get set to decide their Eastern Conference Quarterfinals series this evening in Game 7 at the Verizon Center, it's clichés day as hockey fans all say, "It's do or die, win or go home, a must win situation, one game to decide it all, and winner take it all."

But it's quite a different day for Rangers captain Chris Drury and the team's controversial star Sean Avery. Their years have been as different as an Abba song and a Solzhenitsyn novel.

Drury was captured, live, on rangers.nhl.tv, yesterday describing the year in his life with the hockey team. He says the Rangers got booed all year, they got a new coach around the time of the trade deadline, clinched a playoff spot with two games to go, and found themselves fighting the Washington Capitals.

He doesn't mention that he missed the last game of the regular season and the first game of the playoffs, or that he has been playing injured. He doesn't mention that he took a lot of criticism and stoically offered to take the blame when the Rangers endured their longest slump in decades, after getting a strong start to the season.

Meanwhile, Avery was talking about having fun out there in Game 7, staying loose, and just going out there to play. And look at the year he's had.

A year in the life of Sean Avery starts with The Avery Rule, his duel with Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils, being declared dead after playing against the Pittsburgh Penguins in round two of the playoffs, playing with a lacerated spleen, being called the spine of the Rangers, signing with the Dallas Stars, getting dumped by them, anger management, the AHL, rejoining the Rangers, going from third line agitator to first line scorer, getting the Rangers into the playoffs, having some good games against the Capitals, and then getting suspended, and then seeing the coach who suspended him get suspended.

Of course, there has been some more controversy on the way, and that summary does not even mention Vogue, Men's Vogue, the Gap ad, the movie deal for Puckface, or the restaurant.

For a while, it looked like his hockey career was over, or he might go the way of Ivan Denisovich and wind up in the Gulag Archipelago, playing in the Kontinental Hockey League with Ray Emery, formerly of the Ottawa Senators. Instead of the KHL, he's back in the NHL, playing alongside Nik Antropov, Nik Zherdev, and possibly Artem Anisimov, against Alexander Semin, Sergei Fedorov, Viktor Kozlov, and Alex Ovechkin.

Avery and Drury are rarely on the ice at the same time as they are on different lines. That means the Capitals, with all those Russians in Washington, have to deal with one of them all the time.

Drury may be going into the game saying to himself, "That was one helluva season" while Avery may be saying, "What a wild ride!" And who knows what the Russians are thinking—maybe something like, "I love America!"

Meanwhile, Rangers coach John Tortorella was quoted on newyorkrangers.com saying, “Game Sevens, they are a blast." He is the most winning American coach in NHL history.

Tortorella, who coached Tampa Bay to Game 7 victories in each of the final two rounds of the 2004 Stanley Cup playoffs, also said, "everyone thinks we’re done” so the pressure is on the Capitals.

Come to think of it, Tortorella has had quite a year, too, going from TSN to the New York Rangers, getting suspended during the playoffs, and returning for Game 7.

Of course, the game is also all about the two goalies, Simeon Varlamov, from Russia, who just had his 20th birthday, and Henrik Lundqvist, from Sweden, the country that also gave us Abba and the song "Winner Takes It All".