NHL

NHL SLOPPY HANDLING AVERY

As of tonight, Sean Avery will have been suspended for as many games (two) for yesterday’s on-camera vulgar reference in Calgary to the Dion Phaneuf-Elisha Cuthbert relationship as Randy Jones was last season for his late October hit from behind that concussed Patrice Bergeron and forced the Boston center to miss the remainder of the season.

It’s good to see that the NHL has kept everything in perspective here, isn’t it?

COMMISH CALLS AVERY TO NEW YORK

But then, when it involves Avery, who is every bit as despised by Sixth Avenue as he is in his own locker room, there is no perspective. Sticks and stones may break peoples’ bones, but the NHL has decided that Avery’s words are at least as harmful as hits from behind.

Gary Bettman’s decision to indefinitely suspend Avery pending a hearing tomorrow in New York is extraordinary, unprecedented, and most importantly, an abuse of power that the NHLPA must vigorously oppose even if a vast majority of its membership would just as soon see Page Six Sean receive a dishonorable discharge from the NHL.

This suspension must be challenged in an independent forum where the burden of proof would be placed on the commissioner to demonstrate that saying the words “sloppy seconds” represents “[conduct] detrimental to [the NHL] or the game of hockey,” as Bettman is claiming in citing the language in By-Law 17 and Article 6 of the NHL constitution as grounds for imposing discipline.

Has Avery gone too far this time? Oh, has he gone farther than Chris Pronger when the Anaheim defenseman twice within four games of the 2006 Finals nailed Ottawa opponents with shots to the head.

Apparently, Avery has gone farther than Pronger, apparently Avery’s language was far more detrimental to the game than Pronger’s forearm; twice as bad, actually, for the NHL suspended Pronger for one game following each incident.

Dallas owner Tom Hicks’ enthusiastic support for the suspension is laughable. This is, after all, the same fellow whose Texas Rangers were in the epicenter of baseball’s steroids scandal and are all over the pages of the sport’s Mitchell Report.

This is also the same fellow who took no action against Ed Belfour when the goaltender later pled guilty to a March 20, 2000 misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest arising from a liquor-fueled incident involving a woman at a Dallas hotel that ended with Belfour being escorted away with restraints on his wrists and ankles.

That, as evaluated by Bettman, apparently was not conduct detrimental to the NHL or the game of hockey, for there was sure no suspension against the goaltender.

I’m not defending what Avery said, though in the big picture, do we not have far more important issues to address? Does not the league? We have a football player in this city on the defending Super Bowl champions who appears to have been engaged in an attempt to obstruct justice, yet he remains a member in good standing of his team.

The moment the commissioner acted yesterday, he pulled the plug on what had become an immensely anticipated game. Avery had started promoting this one against the Flames even before the season began when he called Jarome Iginla boring in an interview with ESPN. Yesterday morning, Avery increased it a notch, tasteless though the promotion might have been.

Though it is now impossible to argue either way, I’d suggest that last night’s match would have attracted the largest NHL Network audience ever for any game ever played by either Dallas or Calgary.

But we wouldn’t have wanted that.

Why, spontaneous combustion might actually have occurred on the ice.

Wouldn’t have wanted that, either.

Avery’s future in Dallas, and in the NHL for that matter, are most certainly in doubt. We’ll see if the owner uses this incident as a means to attempt to void the remainder of Avery’s four-year, $15.5 million contract he signed this summer. We’ll see if the Stars place Avery on waivers then attempt to bury him in the AHL, hoping he’ll quit and walk away from the money.

One thing, however, is clear. And that is, in Bettman’s world, George Carlin’s list of seven words you can never say on television has been expanded by two.