Rick Carpiniello at The Rangers Report wonders if the fall-out from last year's benching of Sean Avery in the playoffs is hindering his effectiveness..."Mostly I will be interested to see how Sean Avery plays against his old foil, you-know-who. I will be interested to see if this is the game where Avery becomes a difference-maker again. I am not blaming Avery for anything, not at all. In fact, he has been one of the more reliable Rangers so far. But I haven’t seen the guy who was a difference-maker in almost every game he played down the stretch last season. He has only four penalty minutes, to boot.
And I wonder if any of that is fallout from his benching for undisciplined penalties against Washington in the playoffs. I wonder if the fine line that John Tortorella has him walking is too fine a line for him to play the way he needs to play. I wonder if he needs to be more on the edge, needs to cross that line sometimes. And I wonder if the Rangers just have to live with the idea that he will cost you sometimes, but that the sometimes-over-the-line Avery is the really effective one."
...Avery has been invisible the last three games. No trash talking, no pestering, no Avery being Avery. And its no coincidence that the Rangers play has slipped in those three games. I'm not sure I've ever seen a player, who is not an elite performer, mean so much to a team's success. Sure, Lundqvist keeps the Rangers in every game and Gaborik's scoring ability is always a threat, but if Avery isn't wreaking havoc the Rangers play seems to falter.
...now the problem Tortorella has is if he takes the reins off of Avery does he turn into the undisciplined player we saw in the playoffs last year or the effective hard working, trash talking player that seemed to get the Anaheim Ducks off their game in his return from injury.
...either way, hopefully the site of Brodeur tomorrow night will snap him out of it.
3 comments:
Avery was not invisible against San Jose. He had 2 assists and several good chances alone in front of the net. I'm not sure what game you were watching. He also has points in almost every game he's played in since returning and he's drawn a few penalties too. He's a good player that can produce more than frustration for the other team and he still does his share of yapping out there.
I understand all that, but for some reason the team does not play well unless he's mixing it up. And lately he hasn't been doing that.
Sure he had two assists, but they lost. I would have rather he tried to get under the Sharks players skin as the game started to get away from the Rangers than assist on Lisin's meaningless goal.
I think some teams just see through the trash talking and just aren't phased by little Avery yapping his mouth. They can see him coming a mile away and just skate away. I can see NJ, Boston and lesser teams biting his bait but the Wings and Sharks...doubt they care.
So far this year he's a point per game player with only two penalties. We'll see...
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