NHL

RANGERS SCREAMING OUT FOR AVERY

THIS is pretty much the way it was around here before Sean Avery became a Ranger . . . the first time.

This is pretty much how the Rangers played before Glen Sather went out and brought hockey’s Dead End Kid to Broadway . . . the first time.

They looked in January and February of 2006 the way they look now – dispirited, undisciplined, and a walk in the park to play against.

Nearly halfway through a season in which there couldn’t be a greater disconnect between what you see in the standings and what you see on the ice, the Rangers have no identity. They have no go-to guy. They have no force to worry the opposition.

They are a vanilla team three months away from the handholding club that sang Kumbaya in Bern and Prague. It’s nice that the team has bonded and that everyone does everything together off the ice. Why, they can put that right in their high school yearbooks.

It would be nicer, however, if the bond had been strong enough to carry through at least the first half of the season. It wasn’t. Last night’s 4-2 Garden defeat to the Devils marked the first three-game losing streak (0-2-1) of a season whose trajectory is beginning to resemble the Dow.

“The key for us is to find an identity where we play a certain way, so even if we’re losing, we have something to come back to,” said Markus Naslund, as ineffective as linemates Scott Gomez and Nikolai Zherdev. “I thought we had an identity early in the season as a hard-working team that might not have been pretty to watch, but that found ways to win.”

The Rangers took their sixth too-many-men-on-the ice penalty of the season just 88 seconds in. They surrendered their league-worst 11th shorthanded goal against in the game’s fifth minute. They were pushed off the puck almost at will, which is probably why they spent a majority of the match chasing it.

There isn’t an easier team in the league against which to play. They’re outworked as often as not. The Rangers have a negative-eight goal differential. They have been outscored in every period. They have been outscored at even-strength and are just even on the specialty teams. They are 1-6 in their last seven games decided in regulation, 2-8 in the last 10.

But they like each other! They really like each other!

The Rangers are smooth, like a snow globe. The best teams find the way to incorporate jagged edges into their room and into their equation, the way the Rangers were able to do with Avery.

What happened in Dallas, happened. It’s clear that there’s one team and one team only for which Avery can play; one city and one city only big enough for him to live; one coach and one coach only – the one behind the Rangers bench – for whom Avery can play.

The mechanics of making it happen are hazy. But those are mere details. The Rangers need an infusion of energy. The Rangers need someone who actually will be tough to play against. The Rangers need Avery almost as badly as he needs them, and if anybody doesn’t like it, he should be playing better.

Because this is pretty much it was before Avery became a Ranger . . . the first time.