Of the many trades/transactions completed by Lombardi, truth be told Avery was one of my favorites …. if for only the fact that Avery was on any team other than the Kings. Seriously. The funny thing is that while Avery’s acerbic play on and off the ice has proved effective on the Great White Way – some Ranger fans were anything but happy at the time. I already knew the Kings won with addition by subtraction. The expiration date on Avery had long since passed in Los Angeles.
Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way. Jason Ward also came Los Angeles’ way and he left shortly thereafter. The Kings also received the rights to Jan Marek. Because he never did sign, the Kings get the Rangers 3rd round pick this draft. Lombardi met with Marek and his agent before deciding which way to go and discussed the trip with the Daily News’ Rich Hammond. Read more:
“The second week was to go down and see that Marek kid, because we have to make a decision there, whether to take him or the draft pick. [The Kings would get a third-round pick in 2008].''
``The key in that deal with Cliche. Now it's either (Marek) or a pick, so we went to see him play and we met with his agent to get a feel. The hard part is that they can get so much money in Russia, so there's the question of whether he even wants to try it and then there's the question of where he fits. He's a '79 born, so he's not old but we're still working through that process. He played OK. He's a talented guy, but the thing you run into is that he's small, so you have to look at that. So, we'll see how that works out.''
Lombardi Discusses Marek What Happened After That Trip? “Metallurg Magnitogorsk forward Jan Marek recently turned down a contract offer from the Los Angeles Kings because the Kings would not guarantee him an NHL roster spot, according to a report that was posted today by Sports Express.
Marek’s 63 points in 62 games this past season made him the leading scorer for Magnitogorsk, the Russian Super League Champion.”
Marek Says No
Here is a Keyboard Quarterback’s take for New York who chimed in then:
“The Rangers traded former second round draft pick Marc-Andre Cliche, a member of the gold medal-winning Canadian team in last month’s World Junior tournament, to the Los Angeles Kings, for forward Sean Avery, the NHL’s most penalized player in the last two years.
. . . He also landed highly-touted left wing John Seymour, a former 226th overall pick, who's enjoying a career year with Brampton of the OHL. Yep. He set a new personal best with five assists this year, and if things break right, he may even score more than one goal this season (his career high is three.)
That oughta jump start the rebuilding movement!”
A New York Blogger’s Take on the Avery Trade At the Time
This individual probably didn’t anticipate that the Rangers win-loss percentage with and without Avery would so slant in the favor of Vogue’s newest unpaid intern. In the interest of full disclosure, Steven Simmons, did one of the best articles on Avery by taking into account what he does right.
What Makes Avery Tick
At the time of the trade, The Fourth Period’s Dennis Berstein had a take from the Kings’ perspective:
On Monday afternoon, (Kings GM) Dean Lombardi fooled a team, the New York Rangers, into taking Sean Avery off his hands and actually gave back a player off its NHL roster (RW Jason Ward) and a couple of mid-level prospects to boot (junior Marc Andre Cliche and European Jan Marek).
Lombardi would have been the winner of the deal if he got back a bag of pucks and two broken sticks for Avery.
As marginal as his play was on the ice, he was far worse off it. Sean Avery was a snarling, nasty man in a Kings locker room of decent guys. Despite denials you might hear publicly, he was universally disliked by the team.
There's that old saying "addition by subtraction" and the Kings have added so much by taking this player off their roster.
The Avery Deal from the Kings’ Perspective at the Time
More than a few fans talked this year about the Kings’ lack of toughness would have been different if Avery remained a King. Considering he was such a devisive guy in the room, I suspect if anything the Kings would have stood up for each other even less and Los Angeles’ developing core especially Brown might not have had the year’s they had if Avery kept his crown. Tomorrow, I will put up Part Two in a blog on the real Kings’ asset from the Avery trade, Marc-Andre Cliche.
Carla Muller Carla.hockeygal@att.net