Sean Avery is among the most disliked players in NHL history, known for his trash-talking and controversial behavior on the ice.
No matter what you think of him, you can’t deny that he brought a physical presence to his team. He led the NHL in penalty minutes for two seasons during his career, and his agitating playing style often led to problems, with teams thinking he often crossed the line and trying to terminate his contracts.
Since a few years back, Sean Avery has the podcast ”No Gruffs Given with Sean Avery,” where he always speaks his mind about things happening around the hockey world.
He isn’t shy to hand out criticism to some of the toughest guys in the league, and now, he’s after Ryan Reaves. It’s not the first he’s bashing the Toronto Maple Leafs enforcer. In fact, when Reavo signed with the Maple Leafs this summer, he even claimed that he would outperform Reaves in this year’s Maple Leafs if given the chance.
Now, he once again goes after Ryan Reaves following the controversy regarding an incident with Brad Marchand in last week’s matchup with the Boston Bruins, where no Leaf, Reaves included, went after Marchand following a dirty play on Timothy Liljegren.
He also slams Reaves for his plus/minus rating.
”Ryan Reaves is -8 in 11 games… Toronto Maple Leaf fans – do you understand how bad Ryan Reaves is as a hockey player? I know you guys were excited. You brought him in and he was going to change the DNA of the franchise. He was going to make everyone feel bigger than they are… he’s a protector. It’s great to have a protector around… The problem with Ryan Reaves is I’m not sure if he’s a protector,” he said in his podcast (h/t HockeyFeed).
”Brad Marchand can-opens Liljegren, one of your better defensemen… where was Ryan Reaves? I saw his interview the next day and he was talking about ‘well, I didn’t get matched up with ’Brad Marchand.’ Well, of course you didn’t get matched up with Brad Marchand. You’re -8. You’re one of the worst players in the league… you’re never going to get on the ice with Brad Marchand.”
Sean Avery feels Ryan Reaves has failed to follow through with his assignment in Toronto and now has some work to do.
”You need to find a way to make Brad Marchand still be afraid of you. Isn’t that the idea of your job? So you either gotta work harder in practice on your shot, your skating, your passing, or you gotta look over your shoulder to your coach and say ‘hey, let’s burn a win on this and send a message to the rest of the league that you don’t do that to our star players.’ You don’t, the next day, talk about how you didn’t get on the ice with a future Hall of Famer.”
The quotes from Avery came before Toronto’s matchup with the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday, where Reaves again had a disappointing contest. He only played nine minutes and was a -1 in the plus/minus.
