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Sean Avery:
Love to Hate You, Baby
Rude and wrong? Sure, but we need the guy, if only for the laughs…
By Catherine Pelonero
Hockeytalk.biz | December 9, 2008
Ooo…love to love you baby, ooo…
So go the lyrics to a cheesy yet popular
70s disco tune. Change the second “love” to “hate” and you may well have an
anthem to describe how some of us feel about Sean Avery, current Dallas
Stars forward and perennial NHL bad boy.
Avery’s latest episode of diarrhea of the mouth won
him rebukes from fellow players and NHL brass, not to mention a six-game
suspension from His Royal Highness Gary Bettman. In case you missed it,
Avery approached a group of reporters on December 2 before the Dallas Stars
game against the Calgary Flames and said, “I'm really happy to be back in
Calgary, I love Canada. I just wanted to comment on how, it's become like a
common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds. I
don't know what that's about, but enjoy the game tonight.” Two of Avery’s
former girlfriends are currently dating other hockey players and apparently
he has some issues with it. The Dallas Stars now have some issues with him.
Rumor has it that the Stars may not want Avery back, even after he serves
his suspension and undergoes the mandated “anger management assessment.”
Avery’s off-color remarks in Calgary are only the latest example of his
outrageous behavior, of course. Avery seems to average more indiscretions
per season than points, and that’s saying something for a player with stats
as respectable as his. According to the Dallas Morning News, Brett Hull has
“talked to Avery numerous times about properly channeling his emotions.”
Let’s stop here for a moment. Anger management
assessment? Properly channeling emotions? When did the NHL get into
corporate-style sensitivity training? I mean really. Maybe I’m too
old-school but it sounds like a bit much. Can you imagine Gordie Howe being
sent to anger management, or enduring lectures on how to properly channel
his emotions? And here I thought Bob Probert was a shining example of how
hockey players properly channel their emotions. Then again, Probert never
made rude remarks about somebody’s girlfriend (not publicly anyway), so
perhaps that makes him less angry and more proper than Sean Avery.
But anyway. Helpful hints from The Golden Brett
aside, Avery may not change his wicked ways no matter how many times Brett
Hull lets him rub his Lady Byng Trophy for luck. From coast to coast, Avery
courts trouble like…well, like his fellow players court his ex-girlfriends,
I guess. It’s just so attractive, he can’t resist. And maybe that’s not such
a bad thing, at least not for some fans. I’m going to own up to it: Sean
Avery makes me laugh. He’s so outrageous, so rude, so wrong; and that film
clip of him waving his stick in the face of Martin Brodeur as the enraged
goalie swats at him like a gnat is funny no matter how many times I watch it
on YouTube.
Avery’s torment of Brodeur didn’t stop with the
juvenile stick waving taunt, of course. He follows it up by telling the
press, “Marty is a whiner. He’s always been a whiner,” then quips in a later
interview, in response to the observation that Brodeur failed to shake his
hand during the traditional post-playoff series handshake session, “Fatso
forgot to shake my hand.”
It’s hard to believe that Sean Avery is for real. He
calls a star NHL goaltender a whiner and a fatso. He throws water bottles at
the crowd from the penalty box. He drops and does pushups/humps the ice
after scoring. He tells Anaheim Ducks broadcaster Brian Hayward that Hayward
is an embarrassment, a terrible broadcaster, and adds that Hayward, a former
goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, was a terrible player. And that’s just a
partial tally of what Avery owns up to, not even counting certain notorious
remarks he denies. When asked how he feels about his press coverage, he
snaps back that he doesn’t read the sports pages; he reads Vogue.
As Don Cherry once summed it up, Sean Avery is a
jerk. I’m not arguing with that (although I will say that from a feminine
point of view, his interest in fashion and Vogue is hardly a turn-off). I’m
saying that I get a kick out of him because he’s a jerk. Jerks add spice to
life like cayenne pepper adds spice to food, and some of us like it spicy,
especially – or admittedly – when we are not the ones getting our mouths
burned.
Avery is a one-man, live-action Beavis and Butthead
show. A prank-calling Jerky Boy without the phone. A grand purveyor of
stupid, uncouth things I shouldn’t be laughing at but do anyway. Much like
nasty baseball legend Ty Cobb, Sean Avery is a guy you love to hate.
It’s worth mentioning that the Sins of Sean have
been confined to annoying behavior. He may have left a trail of agitation
and hurt feelings in his wake, but let’s remember that we’re not talking
about a guy who puts kittens through a meat grinder. Or another player’s
head into the boards, for that matter. While I don’t dismiss the power of
words to hurt, we are talking about an obnoxious guy who likes to “mix it
up,” as he puts it, the end result being that he mostly just makes himself
look like a flippin fool. Avery is not a dangerous madman who needs to be
kicked out of the NHL. He’s really more like Joe Fischer, a classmate of
mine in Catholic elementary school.
Joe Fischer was the kid who drove the nuns crazy. He
drove the non-nuns crazy too. He shot spitballs, threw other kids’ books out
the window, and once – in what has to be one of my fondest memories of
elementary school – drew 666 on his forehead on the way into morning mass. I
can still see an angry and embarrassed Sister Gary Bettman (excuse me –
Sister Ann Therese) snatching Joe Fischer out of the pew and dragging him
out of church to wipe the offending message off the little jerk’s
forehead…and perhaps talk to him about properly channeling his emotions. Our
more pious classmates were properly horrified and no doubt went home and
told their parents about the awful thing that bad kid did this time. I told
the story too, but with glee. I thought Joe Fischer was a riot. For me, he
was one of the best things that ever happened to Immaculate Conception
School. I couldn’t wait to see what he’d do next.
To many of us, there is something darkly attractive
about tasteless behavior, even though – or maybe because – we know it’s
wrong. Do I think Sean Avery has done bad things? Yes. Was Bettman justified
in suspending him? Sure, although a six-game suspension might better serve a
player who has caused some actual serious pain and injury rather than a guy
who’s just a perpetual pain-in-the-ass. The nun who dragged my irreverent
classmate out of church was justified too (at least in removing him from
church. I shudder to think what happened when she had him alone.) Still, I
really hope the Dallas Stars, or at least some NHL team keeps Sean Avery
around, and I also hope that Avery doesn’t abandon his penchant for silly
badness. I’d miss Avery and his antics, and I don’t think I’m the only one
who would. A lot of us owe a blushing debt of gratitude to the jerks out
there. The world might be a kinder, more proper place without them, but it
would also be a whole lot less fun. So I say to Sean Avery: You did wrong.
You are a troublemaker, Sean. A rude, ridiculous man who disgraces yourself
and those around you.
Don’t go changing, baby.
Catherine
Pelonero is a playwright and author in Los Angeles.
Pelonero@ca.rr.com
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