LISTEN, I didn’t particu larly like it, either, for after Sean Avery went Reggie Dunlop in the crease against Martin Brodeur on Sunday night (“Hey Hanrahan…”) I was waiting for Brendan Shanahan to ease into the Ned Braden role and do a striptease while taking a lap around the Garden ice.
Avery’s second-period Game 3 break dance in the face of his unwilling partner was right out of “Slap Shot.” It crossed a line, even if it’s all but impossible to define what that line actually is.
As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart so memorably wrote in a 1964 obscenity-case opinion, “I know it when I see it.”
But Avery v. Brodeur was neither a federal case nor an obscenity case, no matter the sour response from Commissioner Gary Bettman on a television interview within hours of the incident.
The demonizing of Avery in the wake of his creative shenanigans is completely out of line. What shrine, exactly, did he desecrate? What player’s leg did he step on with his skate blade? What player did he send flying face-first into the boards on an icing touch-up?
Everyone recognized that the NHL was going to have to address the issue, and with all deliberate speed, to eliminate the possibility of copycats around the league waving their sticks and gloves in front of goaltenders’ faces in order to obscure their vision.
The commissioner may not know one Ace Bailey from the other, but he sure knows that Sean Avery is bad for his no-nonsense league that settles regular-season ties with penalty-shot competitions.
Fact is, the NHL’s unconstitutional adoption of a new rule in the middle of the playoffs without bothering to gain the required unanimous consent of the Board of Governors – a clarification; right, sure – is a far greater scandal than anything Avery did on Sunday.
A reading of this amendment to Rule 57 reveals that it is now legal for a player to wave his arms and/or stick in front of a goaltender’s face as long as the attacking player is not facing the netminder.
And please: Enough with the lectures on hockey morality from Don Cherry; enough from this xenophobe who has made a career out of European-bashing. Enough from him and his disciples.
Lip-readers could detect Chris Drury moving toward Avery and telling him to lower his stick during the power play. His words have been widely interpreted as a rebuke of his teammate. Yesterday, Drury approached a reporter for the sole purpose of putting that notion to rest.
“The referee was yelling, ‘I’m going to give you two [minutes], that’s a penalty,’ and that’s why I told Sean to get his stick down,” Drury told The Post. “I wasn’t yelling at him or giving him [garbage].
“He’s a Ranger. He’s our guy. I would take a bullet for him any time, any day. We all would.”
When Roger Neilson was coaching Toronto, he once ordered his goaltender to leave his stick on the ice in front of the net upon being pulled. When Neilson was coaching Peterborough of the OHA, he once sent extra players onto the ice to get stops in play with his team down two men in the final two minutes of a game, and therefore unable to be further shorthanded.
Neilson was hailed as ingenious. Avery is being cast as menace to society.
The NHL is in the midst of an officiating crisis, and everyone in hockey knows it. Linesmen call icing against a team killing a penalty. Referees guess, work with personal agendas and at cross-purposes from their partners.
Everyone in hockey sees it. Everyone has seen it all year. Everyone except for the commissioner.
Apparently his vision, too, has been obscured by Avery.