SEE YA’: Former Ranger Sean Avery (above) was happy to hear his old antagonist, coach John Tortorella (inset), was fired this week. (
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The first text Sean Avery received informing him John Tortorella had been fired as Rangers’ coach came early Wednesday afternoon while he was in the back seat of a taxi, between business meetings in Manhattan.
“Oh, I had a huge smile on my face, no question about it,” Avery told The Post yesterday. “It’s not that I’m happy for myself. I’m happy for the Rangers and Ranger fans.
“When I was a Ranger, no one was happier to walk into the Garden every day than me. I loved the team. I still do. I want the atmosphere to be the best it can be for the players. I want everyone in New York to be proud of the team. That’s why I felt the way I did [on Wednesday] and that’s why I sent that tweet.”
Ah, that tweet. The one that Avery posted minutes after the Rangers’ March 30, 3-0 defeat in Montreal in a desultory performance that represented the team’s second straight shutout loss.
The one that read, “Fire this CLOWN, his players hate him and won’t play for his BS …”
That one.
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“I hadn’t said anything for a long time. Since I stopped playing, actually,” Avery said. “I hadn’t watched a full game all year.
“But I watched that game from start to finish. All my emotions as a Ranger came back. It was comforting to hear Joe Micheletti’s voice. And then to see what I saw … it wasn’t right,” Avery said. “I had to say something.
“Then there was that statement from [captain Ryan Callahan] on behalf of the team saying I didn’t speak for them. Well, OK, whatever. But look what happened.”
Tortorella could not abide Avery’s persona well before general manager Glen Sather united them in a shotgun wedding in early March 2009 when hiring the coach to replace Tom Renney and re-acquiring the winger on waivers from Dallas.
Familiarity bred outright contempt between the two antagonists before Avery eventually was waived off the club and out of the NHL midway through the 2011-12 season and soon after traded in his skates for a life in advertising.
“But there’s no bitterness and I’ll tell you why,” Avery said. “When John Tortorella forced me out of one career, that opened the door for me on a whole new career and life in New York that is perfect for me.
“The day my NHL contract ended is the day I joined David Lipman and his agency. It gives me the ability to interact with New Yorkers every single day the way I did when I was a player, but on a different stage,” Avery said. “Now I do story-telling and compete with other story-tellers in the advertising business, I’m a promoter, and really, who’s better than me at promoting?
“I said the day I came back to the Rangers that Tortorella was going to be the best thing for me in my career. Well, he was the worst thing ever that could have happened to my hockey career but the best thing that ever happened to my life.”
Avery, who turned 33 in April, announced his retirement from hockey while appearing on a show on the Bravo TV network last year. He said he was throwing his skates in the Hudson. Henrik Lundqvist, with whom he remains quite friendly, asked Avery to shoot at him at a private rink in New York during the lockout, but the request was denied.
“It’s funny, the last couple of days people have been calling me and saying, ‘There’s no question you have to come back now,’ ” Avery said. “I laugh about it.
“Hockey ended at the right time for me. There’s no life I’d rather be having than the one I have now.
“And if I saw John Tortorella on the street, I would give him that sly Avery grin that so many people have been on the other end of, and that would be it.”