A New NHL Season! (Now With Less Sandpaper!)

It's like Christmas morning! Well, for hockey fans, that is. This is my favorite time of year. Halloween is just around the corner, followed by Thanksgiving and the Christmas season, the baseball play-offs are in full swing, and the NFL season is starting to hit its stride. For the casual sports fan, tonight can get lost in the shuffle, but for serious hockey fans (and, let's be honest, is there any other kind?) tonight has been on the calendar and in the back of the mind for quite some time. It's the beginning of the NHL season!

This year, there is icing on the cake. The most hated player in the NHL, and quite possibly in the history of all sports, is no longer part of the league! Yes, everyone's most despised pest, Mr. Sean Avery, has left to accept a full-time gig with Vogue! Ok, maybe not, but Avery cleared waivers and it looks like his future with the NHL is, at least for the foreseeable future, quite dim. If even the Rangers can't tolerate him, you know it has gotten really bad. It didn't surprise me at all that he wasn't claimed. This is a man who was paid half his salary by the Dallas Stars just so they could get him as far away from their players as possible. Even his own coach had this ringing endorsement, ""I think we have better players than Sean Avery -- plain and simple. I can dodge it 10 different ways without trying to run Sean over. I thought he had a good camp." I love this blog post on Avery courtesy of Thinning the Herd. It's a good refresher for those of you who may have forgotten some of Avery's antics throughout the years. What's Sean Avery's legacy? Being one of the most hated players in the history of hockey and having the rules adjusted to accommodate behavior like this.

I think it just got to the point where enough was enough. He had become such a sideshow that he was detrimental to the team. Not even his antics as an on-ice antagonist, which sometimes could help his team by driving the opponent crazy, were enough for him to overcome all the off-ice baggage. His latest incident came when he accused Wayne Simmonds of using an anti-gay slur during a game. Now, if that happened I'm not going to defend the use of that term. However, I would imagine it's not the first time that word was used during a hockey game in the middle of a heated altercation, nor will it be the last. The fact that Avery immediately went and informed the media was akin to a little kid running to tell his mommy after a kid used a "bad word." However, we all know that Avery loves the media! Remember when he sought out a cameraman for this classy display? I'm sure Dion Phaneuf does, and I'm sure to some extent that NHL players around the league snickered at the decision by Avery to act like such a child. Many times players are interviewed after games and reporters press them for what was said during an altercation. Almost invariably, the player declines to reveal that and chooses to take the high road, responding that what is said on the ice should stay there. Not Avery. As with everything else during the course of his volatile career, he chose to make waves. Now it looks like he'll be riding those waves all the way to Europe. Bon voyage, Mr. Avery. Good riddance. You will not be missed.