"It is one thing to be charged with a crime and quite another to be guilty of it, but this much is clear: Sean Avery most certainly did not need Laurel Canyon on Friday night, whatever it was that actually occurred when the police came knocking on his door.

This isn't about Avery's standing on the Rangers, which is no more or less tenuous now than it has been throughout the offseason, and this isn't even about Avery's standing within the NHL, a league that historically has differentiated between conduct in and out of the arena when it comes to crime and punishment.

But being arrested for battery on a police officer, even if the charge is dismissed along the way, does not help Avery be taken seriously as a social progressive, and it does not make it any more likely he will be called upon to lobby legislators on behalf of issues about which he cares deeply and for which he has been an effective advocate.

It has been reported, of course, that Avery is in trouble again as if this is somehow routine, though really this is the first time there ever has been trouble remotely like this. It had better be the last.

Because though Avery is being represented in court by Blair Berk, a high-profile attorney who has represented miscreants such as Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson, the world in which No. 16 lives in New York isn't quite so forgiving of front-page transgressions involving the police and the coach for whom he plays -- or doesn't -- isn't so forgiving at all."