Being fortunate enough to be able to put on a jersey of an NHL team comes with some standard guidelines. One is not using your ex-girlfriend and who she’s dating to publicly build excitement for a game. Many say a suspension by commissioner Bettman and the NHL is excessive for the comments Avery made. I do not.
What we say is important. How we act is important. The NHL hasn’t seen many like Sean Avery in the league. He is growing beyond the sport because of his interest outside of hockey and gets more attention for what he says. Is the NHL holding him to a higher standard? I think he is the only benchmark for this behavior in the league and I think it being handled quickly and fairly. As a representative of the league the standard is high and he’s being held accountable for choosing his crude words.
Avery is a good hockey player, he’s feisty and energetic. He can spark his team with his emotions and he got carried away this time. He’s apologized to the fans the league and his teammates.
Hockey is a tough, hard hitting and sometimes excessively violent sport, but that’s on the ice and many have been suspended for that excessiveness as is the case in other major sports. As a lifelong fan of hockey I believe Avery being suspended is appropriate and as a life long player of hockey and member of the Dallas Stars and player in the NHL I believe that Avery does too.
on Dec 6th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Well, here I find myself trying in vain to wrap my feeble mind around how offensive Avery’s remarks really were. Aside from how badly reported the actual wording of the quote seems to be, how many women do you know who happen to serially date one man after another in the same profession? Accountant groupies may indeed exist, as well as lawyer, doctor or candlestick maker groupies, but I’ve never heard of them as a social phenomenon that matches the scope of rock star groupies, or NHL groupies, for that matter. Are we supposed to still be feigning to protect the “weaker sex” as manly men? Even were this accomplished athlete & businessman to have used the term “sloppy seconds”, did he name which girlfriend about whom he was commenting? Just how do we know her individual name, if she weren’t publicly notorious already about her prediliction for a microcosmically small percentage of available males in North America? She has to be protected from her own public exhibitionism? I’ll worry much more about the truly innocent humans, both female & male, who don’t seek the limelight of fame, thank you very much!
on Dec 6th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I think a suspension is crazy. Was it stupid for him to say? Maybe. I am not really sure but what I do know is the NHL is inconsistent with suspensions. Patrice Bergeron of the Bruin’s got him from behind. Knocked out cold from a dirty not borderline dirty hit but a dirty hit from a Flyer player the name escapes my mind and he got suspended for 2 game. Avery makes a comment about some sloppy seconds and he gets 6 games? Patrice missed all of last year after the hit. He couldn’t speak, walk with out sitting every few steps his career was threatened. Months and months after the hit Patrice gave a press conference and it was almost like he was in la la land yet the perp gets 2 games? So my point is Avery didn’t hurt anybody physically so 6 games was way to excessive and I am not a fan of Avery one bit but I do know when something is unfair. When Bettman doled out the 2 game suspension he set bar in my opinion.
on Dec 6th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
It was Randy Jones and it was NOT a dirty hit. Bergeron was bending over and had stopped just before he was hit, which contributed to the distance he was from the boards and the angle at which he was driven into the stanchion that holds the arena glass in place.
on Dec 7th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Another horrible decision by Gary Bettman. Totally excessive. Sean Avery is a prick, no doubt, but what he said about his ex-girlfriend is, in fact, true. Plus this kind of thing can only stir controversy and publicity for the league, which we can all agree is badly needed.
Bettman needs to be replaced ASAP.
on Dec 8th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Joe Guckin… It was absolutely a DIRTY hit. I’ve never seen anyone get suspended for a clean hit. I’ve played alot of hockey and since I was little I was always told and hear it during telecasts now that if you can visably see the players name on the back it’s a hit from behind, Boarding whatever you want to call it. Randy Jones should have missed the same amount of time that Patrice did.
on Dec 9th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Sorry, Paul, but you’re dead wrong. This is one case where the league got the suspension right.