President Obama and Deepak Chopra on Hockey Skates

Sean Avery has been called Deepak Chopra on skates.

I interviewed Deepak Chopra when President Bush was at a low level of popularity and a lot of people were pushing the guru to run for the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

The American Buddhist Association had just named Chopra the Buddhist of the Year, even though he's not a Buddhist.

We were at the Omega Holistic Institute, near Woodstock, N.Y., about an hour north of New York City, where bumper stickers and a local best-seller said "America Needs A Buddhist President."

Chopra told me, "I am not running for the presidency, and I am certain the perfect candidate will appear as the manifestation of our collective unconscious".

Shortly after, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama started campaigning and now the USA has a president who is seen as a symbol of change and hope, and a president who is seen as a jock! (He's on the cover of Men's Journal with the caption Jock-In-Chief.)

The new president's game is basketball, not hockey, of course.

Imagine a hockey-playing president...

While campaigning in North Dakota, he was given a hockey stick, from the University of North Dakota's team, the Fighting Sioux, and it looked like he knew what to do with it.

Deepak Chopra was in a hockey movie recently, making a guest appearance as himself in The Love Guru, which featured an African-American is the star of the Toronto Maple Leafs and of the NHL.

Imagine Sidney Crosby being replaced by the Tiger Woods of hockey. It could happen!

Imagine Tiger Woods playing hockey. Imagine a hockey player with Buddhist calm and concentration.

The new and improved Sean Avery, fresh out of Anger Management, has gone from being the NHL's No. 1 bad boy, voted most hated by other hockey players, and a Top Ten trash talker, fighter, and villain, to a new man described as Zen-like, in a sportsnet.ca headline, as well as Deepak Chopra on skates, by Arthur Staple on newsday.com.

How could this happen? Talk about a paradigm shift!

Perhaps Avery is not the idiot many have said he is. And maybe he's not an evil genius, either.

Maybe Sean Avery is an artist. After all, he demonstrated artistic sensibilities and aspirations last summer as he applied for and completed an internship at Vogue magazine. He demonstrated his artistic abilities as guest editor at Men's Vogue.

"The true artist is the product and preceptor of his times," according to the surgeon and artist Norman Bethune, who had a high profile in the place where Sean Avery played his junior hockey. Bethune was once a high school teacher in Owen Sound, Ontario, where Avery was a high school student.

Sean Avery's career in hockey, so far, has lasted as long as the presidency of George W. Bush. During that time, Avery was accused of playing hockey in way that could be characterized as, dare I say it, "bush league."

Now the USA and the free world has a new leader and, coincidentally, Sean Avery has a new attitude about his sport and about life, apparently.

Avery was suspended indefinitely from the NHL at the end of an era in which many in America and round the world had lost hope. The odds on Avery returning to the Dallas Stars or any NHL team were described as hopeless.

Now Bush has gone to Texas and Avery is in Hartford, on his way to New York (Deepak Chopra country), and President Obama is in Washington, home of the Capitals.

Sean Avery may at first appear to be an unlikely candidate for being a symbol of change and hope, but his journey from hockey villain to hero (and becoming a Vogue intern, Men's Vogue guest editor, and Gap model, with a movie in the works about him) should inspire every man that there is hope for change and Hollywood happy endings.