NHL

RANGERS MUST ACT QUICKLY WITH AVERY

This was two years and three days ago when the Rangers’ 4-3 Garden defeat by the Red Wings in a game they’d led 3-1 entering the third was accompanied by the news that the Blueshirts had acquired Sean Avery from the Kings.

“Hopefully that’s going to help us,” Jaromir Jagr said that night. “But we need more than Sean Avery right now.”

Jagr is in Siberia, but the analysis still rings true now that the Rangers could be as close to two days away from reacquiring Avery. That would happen if the Stars place the winger on re-entry waivers tomorrow (after he clears regular waivers at noon today), and no team lower in the standings decides to block the reunion.

It would be the smart play for the Rangers to accelerate the process rather than allowing the Stars to assign Avery to the Blueshirts’ AHL Hartford affiliate for an indeterminate period of time before going the re-entry route.

The Rangers gain nothing by allowing teams to get a free look at Avery for a week or two before deciding whether to pluck him. That’s a time frame in which some club might suffer a series of injuries and thereby choose to take a shot at him. If any team wants him, the Rangers should force the decision to be made immediately, sight unseen.

Plus, it best serves the Rangers’ interests to get Avery into the organization as quickly as possible in order to integrate him into the equation as smoothly as possible and to have complete control of the process and the timetable.

If Avery does go on re-entry tomorrow and the Rangers get him on Wednesday, they could assign him to the Wolf Pack for up to two weeks of conditioning, during which time he would be on the NHL roster.

Under that scenario, the Rangers, who have approximately $900,000 of space, would be hit with a pro-rated $625,000 cap charge on Avery. They could recoup $508,000 by waiving or trading Petr Prucha, who will be scratched tonight in New Jersey.