VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The trip begins here tonight and after a layover in Edmonton on Thursday, it concludes in Calgary on Saturday for the Rangers and for Sean Avery.
And that’s appropriate for Avery, because Calgary is where it both all ended and began anew for him last season, once he uttered those two forbidden and forever immortalized words, “sloppy seconds,” that got him tossed out of Gary Bettman’s league for three months and banished forever from Dallas.
“To tell you the truth, it’s kind of a fog for me when I look back,” Avery told The Post on Saturday when asked to reflect on his first visit to Calgary since that fateful day of Nov. 30, 2008. “There are times that maybe I flash back to that morning and the whole scene surrounding it, but when I do it’s only for a few seconds and a lot of it is very foggy.
“I mean, it was only about three months that I was out of my element, so I kind of group that whole time that I was away from New York. It’s very foggy.”
Avery was away from his element, away from his people, because the Rangers wouldn’t come close to paying market price to keep him when he became a free agent following the 2007-08 season. Actually, the Stars were the only team to meet his price, and did so largely because assistant GM Brett Hull had befriended Avery while the two were teammates in Detroit.
But the four-year, $19.5 million contract Avery signed with Dallas on July 2, 2008 quickly became more a sentence of solitary confinement than a deal to become a contributing member of the organization. Avery quickly was ostracized by his teammates, publicly scorned by alleged team leaders such as captain Brenden Morrow, Mike Modano and Marty Turco. Head coach Dave Tippet hardly helped matters.
And so, lonely and living in an alien environment in which there was no such thing as Fashion Week and was no such animal as Page Six, Avery found himself in Calgary after 23 mediocre games as a Star. He was preparing for a match against the Flames, whose stud defenseman, Dion Phaneuf, had hooked up with Avery’s former girlfriend, actress Elisha Cuthbert.
Which, as the world knows, led to the crude remarks about relationships following the morning skate that created a firestorm throughout the NHL that even reached into the TSN studios in Toronto where a commentator named John Tortorella felt compelled to denounce Avery as if the player had spoken out in favor of the trap.
“The way I remember it is that I just needed to do something that would get my own emotions going,” Avery said. “If anything I was challenging myself to get myself going, because I always play better when there’s a target on my back for the other team, which is evident the way this season has gone.
“That was a situation that was just another one where I was trying to create a challenge for myself to play better.”
Avery never played for Dallas again. Within hours he was on his way to a hearing in New York chaired by Bettman, who suspended him for six games and sentenced him to anger-management classes while announcing that he wouldn’t know how to explain No. 16’s lapse in etiquette to his daughter.
Stars owner Tom Hicks banned him, more infuriated over Avery’s words than by his baseball Rangers’ clubhouse being outed as the epicenter of the sport’s steroids scandal. Hence, the willingness of Hicks, who is in severe financial distress, to eat approximately $7.5M in order to get him out of town.
Amateur psychologists and columnists, the worst kinds of those sorts, labeled Avery a misogynist. He was, don’t you know, the worst hockey person who had ever lived!
“I was back in New York almost immediately and except for the time I spent in counseling, I basically sheltered myself in the city for the next few months from everything that was going on in around me,” Avery said. “I called Elisha to apologize and explain myself, and she was great.
“She was cool about it. She’s great.”
Avery said he had neither spoken to Phaneuf in the aftermath of the incident nor has any intention of doing so. He laughed when asked if he had needed to call various former girlfriends to explain himself. “No, only [Elisha].
“You know, all of my friends stayed with me. My friends in New York would all tell you they didn’t understand why I was suspended,” he added. “They didn’t think I had done anything wrong. They all thought it was kind of crazy.
“But I closed myself off from it. From the minute I was suspended, I had an agenda to work my way back. I knew I needed to get back to New York, so everything I did was with tunnel vision to accomplish that goal.”
On March 3, Avery became a Ranger again, claimed on re-entry waivers by the only team in the NHL for which he can play and will have him. Now, he goes back to Calgary, goes back to face Phaneuf, goes back to the scene of the Hockey Crime of the Century.
“Now that I think of it, I’m excited,” Avery said. “There are always tough games in that building, and that’s what I need.”
That’s it? That’s his story? “Well, no, there’s more, there’s a lot more,” said Page Six Sean. “But I’m not going to say it this time.”