#16's #s: 69 games, 11 goals, 20 assists, even, 160 PIM.
Take the good: As Avery goes, so go the Rangers. He returned to his normal, acerbic self at the end of the season and the Blueshirts took off. Avery at his best drives the other team to distraction and still manages to chip in the occasional goal or two. He had nine points over the 12 games he played in after the Olympics and his absence was certainly a factor in the final loss as the Flyers had no trouble keeping the Rangers on their heels. And who can forget Avery mocking Max Talbot? That was one of the highlights of the season. Take the bad: When Sean wasn't being Sean, the Rangers suffered. Avery was emasculated in the '09 playoffs and had trouble finding his manhood (as Torts had it in a box somewhere). Without it, Avery spent a solid amount of the season disappearing into the background, which is somewhere someone with his talents certainly can't be. He had three goal droughts that lasted more than 10 games (15, 19 and 11); he didn't score once in the entire month of December.
Take them both and then we have: The little engine that powers the Rangers and entertains the hell out of us fans - and at a reasonable price thanks to Dallas. This season he was as inconsistent as the team around him but the good thing is that in the postmortem interviews he seems to realize that. Hopefully he learns from it.
2 comments:
I think his bad is his combination with Torts not knowing how to communicate with Avery and no leaders in the locker room (ala Shanahan) to keep him at the level he needs to stay at.
It was one of those rare situations where a dick-in-a-box was a bad thing.
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