Sean Avery vs. Machiavelli

Sean Avery has a public relations agent as well as a hockey agent, and he is on record saying his trash talk is scripted. He does his homework, apparently, so he can get under his opponents' skins with his comments.

The comments that got him suspended from the NHL may have been calculated to instigate a fight with Calgary Flames trash talker Dion Phaneuf and to get the team off their game.

It should be noted that Avery's team went on to win that game.

But maybe Avery's comments were crafted to achieve a bigger goal.

Maybe it was all part of a Machiavellian plan to market Sean Avery, and give his career a makeover, so he could get out of Texas and back to the media center of America—New York City, with some time off to model for Gap and work on the New Line movie about his stint with Vogue and Men's Vogue.

My first career was in PR and I stayed in the business long enough to learn that some marketing strategies are so complex they could be called Machiavellian.

Machiavelli was an Italian diplomat, political philosopher, musician, poet, and playwright—an Italian Renaissance Man, most famous for a short book called The Prince.

His name became synonymous with ruthless politics, deceit, and the pursuit of power by any means. Machiavellian is defined as, "The employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct."

Say you had a client who was hockey's biggest villain and your job was to make his name better known than his sport's No. 1 hero, Sidney Crosby. How could one possibly accomplish that?

The past few months have shown us how it's done.

Watch for a new line of clothes designed by Sean Avery, a movie starring Sean Avery, and what the hell, Sean Avery as the first hockey-playing president of the U.S.

Oh yeah, you have to be born in the USA to get that job.

Watch for Sean Avery to go from from captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs to being Prime Minister of Canada.

Never mind, he wouldn't want that job. He's used to having a higher profile.

Anyway, he'll be so rich by then he could buy Canada. But he says he doesn't like the hockey mad Canadians much anymore, so maybe he'll just buy an island in the Caribbean with a hedonistic resort and a hockey rink.

You have to ask yourself, "What would Machiavelli do?"