Almost no one on this board can answer this bc few of us have watched for more than MAYYYYBE 20 years. The people who did watch longer than that likely have biases that make them unreliable. Only one person really gave any sort of actual info (
@NYSPORTS ) in a single post about a past (non Avery) player. A few people offered their opinion fairly but of course we got tons of stupid, half assed thoughts and revisionist history too.
During the last 20 years? Effective as a pest, without considering the rest of his game? Avery by a mile...
Never saw anyone draw penalties and turn the momentum of an entire game the way he did, frequently...without even making a good hockey play. Solely as a pest I have doubts if anyone was ever better at it. It didn't even stop when the game was over. Bit of a throwback to when guys would chirp the shit out of each other in the 70s-90s in every sport.
He was absolutely a key player during his first run here. To anyone saying different...well some people are either misremembering or (more likely) this board is very agenda driven and full of people electing to rewrite history.
I got non sports watching friends into hockey partially thanks to Avery. We started using his name as a label meaning "Biggest prick who accomplishes great things through the power of assholetry".
Which, come to think of it is kind of what a pest is in the NHL. Which, fair enough, might just be something unique to me and my buds but more likely he was just a crazy son of a bitch, a great character who brought something you rarely see in sports (especially now). That character could entertain and translate beyond just what goes on on the ice. He could affect the game in ways beyond just what you normally do on the ice
By the grace of whatever god you believe in, it all paid off with us being at the Broduer screening game, maybe 8 seats away from Broduer and Avery when it happened. Sometimes life just works out well.