After the dust settled on Sean Avery's newly-vented spleen this afternoon, my prayers for Avery faded but my thoughts did not; specifically, thoughts about what kind of reaction the belligerent New York Ranger might have for the New York Daily News, which misreported that Avery was unconscious, had stopped breathing and was in cardiac arrest early Wednesday morning.

This is, after all, a player that already has one libel claim to his credit this season. Avery went after a Toronto radio reporter who claimed that Avery make derogatory references about Jason Blake's cancer, inciting a skirmish before a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Reporter Howard Berger later retracted the report and apologized on FAN 590 to end the ordeal.

In speaking to some friends in the newspaper and legal businesses Wednesday, the Daily News shouldn't have reason for concern. It quickly corrected its reporting, scrubbing its original story of any reference to "cardiac arrest" after the Rangers and other media outlets reported that Avery has instead suffered a lacerated spleen. There's also an absence of malice here ... unless the newspaper's refuted report that Avery was in the little black book of a high-end Manhattan madam can somehow indicate a pattern.

After a full day of silence on his Blueshirts Blog, Daily News writer John Dellapina -- who shared a byline on the "cardiac arrest" report -- addressed the situation at the end of a blog post previewing Game 4 of the Rangers' series against the Pittsburgh Penguins. His defiant comments seem to indicate he believes there's some truth to the original story -- and that tales of lacerated spleens were concocted for easy consumption by his gullible peers in the mainstream media.

Dellapina wrote:

Finally, for all those from other media outlets and newspapers who have sarcastically dismissed our initial web story about Sean Avery's hospitalization since the Rangers refuted it Wednesday afternoon, I wonder:

Was your initial reaction that the story couldn't have been correct or did you simply race up to the MSG Training Center to get player reaction? And, did you call the hospital and/or Avery's representatives to get the real story or did your "reporting" simply consist of taking the team's word for what happened?

Fortunately, the intrepid men an women of the press who have exposed baseball's steroid problems didn't similarly regurgitate what they were told by people who understandably want their businesses viewed as beyond reproach.

So is Dellapina simply slamming his peers for lazy reporting on a story the Daily News stuck its neck out to break? Or does "taking the team's word for what happened" seem to indicate he thinks that the "lacerated spleen" is a conspiratorial cover for something much more sinister, despite the denials that Avery had any heart problems?

And if it is a cover story ... what does Dellapina know that he isn't sharing? What does he believe the Rangers, and Avery, are hiding?