Why Sean Avery’s hockey season is probably over
The American Hockey League has released its "Clear Day" rosters for all 30 teams, as in:
Each Clear Day roster consists of a maximum of 22 players. According to AHL by-laws, only those players listed on a team's Clear Day roster are eligible to compete in the remainder of the 2011-12 AHL regular season and in the 2012 Calder Cup Playoffs, unless emergency conditions arise as a result of recall, injury or suspension.
The Connecticut Whale's 22-man roster features some familiar names from the New York Rangers — Tim Erixon, Mats Zuccarello, Wade Redden — and one gigantic, glaring omission: Sean Avery.
Avery's on the Whale's roster, but he's only played seven games this season in the AHL. His stint with the Whale has featured a multitude of healthy scratches and a bit of controversy involving his coach. There was talk he might be placed on waivers around the trade deadline, but it never happened.
So Avery continues to toil in his personal hockey hell, banished by the Rangers and unable to move to another team. On top of all of this, Wesley Morris of Grantland now says that Avery's missed his Dennis Rodman moment and has become irrelevant. How gauche!
"It seemed bold back then. Avery wanted to be noticed for both his hockey and his interest in haute couture, for agitating in his sport and away from it, for making people feel weird about whatever fixed idea they have about the genders. He wanted to be Dennis Rodman. But the culture appears to have caught up with him. Who is a male sports star without a line of clothes or a contract with a big fashion company? And Dan Savage, as it turns out, is better qualified to be Dan Savage. Avery's been usurped. He's been normalized."
Meanwhile, in news about players that have accepted their lot in life and rolled with it, Wade Redden was recently named captain of the Whale.
