New York Rangers' Biggest Bargain Is Their Best Forward Sean Avery

New York Rangers fans and writers are looking at salaries these days, thinking about next season, now that this one is done, and they must be thanking their lucky stars there is one bargain in the batch.

The Rangers' rep as a haven for overpaid veterans playing their way to retirement has changed. Now the rap against the Rangers is that they are harboring overpaid underachievers—with one notable exception.

The Rangers gave huge contracts to several players but got Sean Avery at half price.

According to the New York Daily News, 10 Rangers take up roughly $42 million of cap space. Wade Redden's $6.5 million salary, Scott Gomez's $7.357 million salary, and Michal Rozsival's $5 million pay stub, to mention a few, make Sean Avery look like the biggest bargain since free agentry.

Chris Drury's salary is about the same as Gomez's, reportedly.

Apparently the Rangers have Gomez at seven years, $41.5 million; Chris Drury at five years, $35.25 million; defenseman Wade Redden at six years, $39 million; defenseman Michal Rozsival at four years, $20 million; forward Markus Naslund at two years, $8 million; and only two of that group are younger than 30.

Avery just turned 29. The Dallas Stars signed Sean Avery to a four-year $15.5 million contract and the Stars and Rangers now split Avery's salary and cap cost for the duration of his contract, which runs through the 2001-12 season.
 
The Stars will pay about $2 million of his salary for each of the next three seasons.
 
Most sports writers agree that adding Sean Avery on the ice and Tortorella behind the bench made the Rangers better. Of course, some fans would like to shove Sean Avery's dome through the boards, but that's another story.

Almost everyone agreed Avery was the best Ranger on the ice in the last game of their playoff series and most would say he was the best hockey player on the ice. Also, most say he was the best Rangers forward after he rejoined the team this year, around the time of the NHL Trade Deadline.

Avery, at $2 million a year, compared to what the Rangers are paying Drury, Gomez, and Naslund, not to mention Redden, has to be the biggest bargain in sports—never mind hockey.

His statistics as a scorer and playmaker, earning assists, are okay but everybody knows his contribution to the team is in intangible areas such as toughness and identity, not to mention his status as the No. 1 agitator in the NHL.