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TORONTO — They are known as pests, agitators and shift disturbers (at least in print).
They are reviled at every turn in the NHL, but every team wants one of them.
“He's a guy you love to play with and hate to play against,” is the word on players such as Sean Avery of the New York Rangers and Darcy Tucker of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who collided on Saturday in Toronto.
By the end of the Rangers' 3-2 shootout win at the Air Canada Centre, they had provided an object lesson in the value of these risk-and-reward players.
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The night started with Avery, known far and wide as the nastiest trash-talker in the league, setting off a confrontation with Tucker in the pregame warm-up. Onlookers were left wondering if Avery, who grew up in nearby Pickering, Ont., was a little too jacked up about playing in front of his family and friends.
Avery, 27, is no stranger to discipline from both the league and his own team for his intemperate remarks and his rough-housing. The Los Angeles Kings grew tired of his antics and traded him to the Rangers last year.
Rangers head coach Tom Renney, though, saw a good hockey player under the bluster and managed to bring that out while keeping the competitive spirit that drives Avery.
This season, the Rangers are 5-2 with Avery in the lineup and 4-5-1 without him. Tucker does not have similar numbers with the Leafs – 4-4-3 with him and 3-3-1 without – but his teammates swear they are a better team with him.
Renney, who was Tucker's coach in junior hockey, sees much in common between the two players. He said Avery's presence fires the competitive spirit of his teammates.
“I think we all have it but in a lot of players it's sort of dormant,” he said. “Sean, I think, ignites that in all of us. His teammates love him.”
But the older ones among them also know Avery needs to be reminded occasionally to settle down.
“The biggest reason why we wanted him last year – everybody knows about his antics and his ability to fight, draw penalties and get under people's skin – is that he's really a much better player,” Rangers winger Brendan Shanahan, 38, said. “Every once in a while I'll go to him and give him a little reminder that he is a player.
“When he finds that right combination of getting under people's skin and focusing on the game he is a very, very effective player.”
But in those few seconds before the game, it looked like Avery was headed off the rails. In the first period on Saturday, he and Tucker wound up in the usual fight that follows such things.
Then, Avery showed the reward side of his game. He made a nice move to elude Leafs defenceman Pavel Kubina behind the net to set up a goal by Shanahan early in the second period. Then, Avery scored 42 seconds later to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead.
After the game, Tucker would only say Avery's remarks toward him before the game were “classless,” which amused Shanahan, who had just finished describing Avery as a clone of Tucker, especially in the Toronto forward's younger days.
Avery did not have much to say at all, apparently by decree of Rangers general manager Glen Sather.
Shanahan said the mood in the pregame scrum was actually rather friendly, “except for the two guys involved,” because the days when those shenanigans were routine in the NHL and junior hockey are long gone. Renney had a flashback to those junior days in the WHL, when news of the confrontation was delivered.
On one road trip, Renney was ill and was replaced by his team's GM. “Our team got in a brawl and [the GM] was in the bathroom and couldn't get out in time to do anything about it. I was thinking about that when my boys came in and said there was something going on out there.”
Actually, Renney added, Tucker was never one of the instigators of those pregame confrontations as a junior, even though he was a leading agitator on the Kamloops Blazers and appeared to be motioning at his old coach from the penalty box on Saturday night.
“He can play on my team any time,” Renney said.
Nevertheless, Renney will have a word with Avery about his tête-à-tête with Tucker. He also expects to hear from the league about it, too.
“I'll just tell him it's not how you get your team ready to play or get yourself ready to play,” Renney said. “I'm not big on that; just get yourself ready to play and let the game dynamic take care of that.”
