THE new most pertinent num ber as it applies to Sean Avery isn’t the Rangers’ record with him and without him since the beginning of the 2005-06 season (60-28-15 with him, 35-38-8 without him), and it isn’t even the amount of cap space he will eat on the contract he already should have earned as an impending free agent.
The new most pertinent number is, in fact, zero – as in zero hits for the Rangers in the second period of their Game 5 elimination loss in Pittsburgh last Sunday with Avery watching at home on television after having been released that morning from St. Vincent’s Hospital.
No hits in 20 minutes from a Rangers team that’s as vanilla as a cup of Carvel ice cream without Avery in the lineup and every bit as soft.
This winter, Glen Sather traded for Christian Backman and his $3.2M cap hit for 2008-09, not to mention a $4M salary. The GM gave impending restricted free agent Fedor Tyutin a three-year extension, increasing the Paul Theofanous client’s salary from $987,500 to $2.843M per the next four years, a staggering jump beyond rational explanation.
Sather rarely fights with his players over money. Yet he’s been predisposed to fight with Avery since last summer, when the GM shut down talks on a long-term deal by offering less money than he had been paying Sandis Ozolinsh to do nothing.
And yet, Sather played hardball all winter with Avery, never offering more than $2.75M per season. It seems as though Sather is prepared to take the same approach this spring, even as the Rangers prepare for their organizational meetings this week at the GM’s home in La Quinta, even as Avery is free to go on July 1.
Are we supposed to believe that Sather believes Avery’s value is less than Backman’s or Tyutin’s? Are we supposed to believe that Sather isn’t aware that Avery will be able to get considerably more than Sather’s offering if he hits the open market?
Are we supposed to believe that Sather believes the Rangers can come close to replacing Avery if they hardball him out the door and instead spend the money to replace him on a Kristian Huselius, Vinny Prospal, Cory Stillman, Martin Gelinas and/or Matt Cooke?
Avery isn’t a day at the beach. He can grate on people. He isn’t easy . . . isn’t always easy to have as a teammate, isn’t always easy to coach . . . isn’t ever easy to play against.
This isn’t about what’s in vogue or who’s working at Vogue. It’s about signing the individual whose personality and game are unique among Rangers. It’s about keeping the player who was most singularly responsible for beating the Devils in the playoffs, or was Martin Brodeur’s meltdown just a coincidence?
There’s not a lot of cap space for Sather to fill a half-dozen significant pending vacancies, probably $19M max. The GM no doubt will want to hold on to a few million with which to work during the season, though waiving Backman before 2008-09 begins will create breathing room.
Still, the priority for Sather is to get Avery done at the front end of the process, not to see what’s left over at the end. Or at least it should be. Unlike the call on Jaromir Jagr – if the Rangers bring back No. 68, they are not simply committing to a player, but to a program and likely to an entourage – this is a slam-dunk.
Sather didn’t ask Scott Gomez or Chris Drury to take a discount last summer and he didn’t ask Tyutin or Henrik Lundqvist to take a discount this winter. Why would he expect Avery to take a significant discount now? Jagr, by the way, will be posing the same question if and when the Rangers ask him to take less.
Playing in New York has tangible value for Avery, both as a personality and as a player. The parts of the city and the city culture that he cares about have embraced him. The coach for whom he plays has accepted him. Never will Avery play for a coach so loyal to his players as Renney.
As such, maybe Avery would take a little less to stay. But not a significant amount. The way he plays, this could well be his last and biggest contract. It’s absurd to expect him to leave up to $6M on the table to take, say, a three-year, $10M deal that Sather hasn’t even come close to offering yet.
The relationship has been mutually beneficial, but the Rangers need Avery every bit as much as Avery needs the Rangers. It’s crazy to think otherwise.
It’s imperative for Sather to recognize that and stop acting as if he’s Darcy Tucker at center-ice during warmups looking for a fight, looking for a fight he’s not going to win and that the Rangers are going to lose.