Avery suspended for 6 games / Updated: Hull and Bettman reactions

5 games for insulting a hollywood celebrity and 1 for hurting Dion Phaneuf's feelings. I kid.
Avery must have put on some serious acting skills (maybe even showing some tears). From TSN:

Avery also agreed to seek professional anger-management evaluation and, if necessary, structured counseling in light of his pattern of behavior, which the NHL has deemed unacceptable and antisocial behavior. Avery will not be eligible to play again for the Stars until Dec. 16, when Dallas hosts the Phoenix Coyotes.

"Mr. Avery has expressed remorse for his recent comments and has sought a professional anger management evaluation," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a league-issued statement. "I will require that he follow through with that process as a condition of his returning to the ice and that he complies with any and all recommendations."

So it sounds like it was a scolding turned into a therapy session given the anger management part.
The question is: will the Stars show the same remorse and allow Avery back into the lineup? Not even the Moose want Avery at this point. Yes, the Stars share Manitoba as a partial affiliate with Vancouver.

Image: Frank Franklin II

*UPDATE*

So what is Avery's future with the Stars? Well even that has been suspended indefinitely. The Stars are going to make sure Avery gets the help he needs to control his anger.

"We have to fix him before anything else,'' Brett Hull said. "We'll use the four games to get the ball rolling.
You've got to care of the individual,'' Hull said. "We've got to fix him first and the hockey player is secondary.''

BETTMAN'S OPINION

"If it happened on the ice and it had no involvement with it being publicly disseminated or immediate interaction with fans, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation because nobody would have known about it," Bettman said. "For anybody to equate public statements and fan interaction with trash talking on the ice would not be an accurate thing to do.

"The reliability on the information you get from those conversations obviously is a little more difficult. Here it was simple because everybody heard it and saw the tape. There are lines that can be crossed on the ice, but we're talking about something completely different."

More on Bettman's reactions here.
This Avery Circus is so pathetic that I can't even put it into words. Avery is the Paris Hilton of hockey it seems.
Maybe he'll find Jesus or Zen in his therapy. Yet if any of you have ever met or known anyone who has a fiery temper/attention-whore/cocky type of attitude you know that this kind of personality is almost impossible to change.
Anyways, enough about Avery. I'd rather talk about cow dung...or maybe a Canucks-Wild preview.



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