Has anyone seen the Versus/NHL television promo featuring Philly Flyer Daniel Briere taking aim and shooting pucks through the windows of a factory as his dog unconcernedly looks on? In documentary realism-style, B&W, no less?

You have?

(Below, a URL to the Versus/NHL promo if you haven’t)

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/flyers/9764137.html

Then like me, maybe you admired the sports cable net for their originality. And at the same time wondered about the criminal mischief, destruction of private property, etc., that the promo so off-handedly presents.

Can this be the former Outdoor Life Network’s attempt to target the urban market? Or am I giving them too much credit?

Now if Briere were shooting those pucks through the corner, corporate office window of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman…

Mark my words. Or don’t…

Come two to three months in, as during last season, the Rangers will want for a defenseman that plays the body first and the puck second, inspires a little honest fear in the heart of opposing teams’ forwards lest they get a little too comfortable camped out in front of Henrik, and judiciously applies a few bruises to these same offenders.

Strudwick won’t do that, Pock won’t, and Staal won’t either.

Cap or no cap, Renney/Slather — no disrespect intended toward Tom by that grouping — should of found a math to allow for Kasparaitus’s return to Broadway.

One can only now hope, for Kaspar’s sake, that a team in need picks him up; yes, not easy, given his price tag vis a vis the realities of the cap. But this athlete deserves an opportunity better than Hartford.

Preseason Game Notes and On Gals in Hockey

Okay, so much of the tilt at the Garden last evening resembled a level of play more familiar to opponents in a sloppy NCAA Division III Hockey contest than a game fought between NHL rivals. “Tilt,” here, is employed as a double entendre, since the ice at MSG seemed set at a downward slope in the direction of the Devils defensive zone throughout the first period.

Some “on the fly” thoughts and observations…

—Did you happen to catch the interview clip of Ranger GM Glen “Slats” Slather discussing the Sean Avery arbitration during MSG’s Season Preview Special? You did? Then like me, you heard Sather describe the arbitration process as a “fight” between parties involving “arguments that aren’t always the most truthful.” Kudos, to MSG to replay the clip during the game, not least because it allowed me to be sure to get the quote right. Pshew… “…aren’t always the most truthful,” Slats? I don’t know. I’m no Randy Cohen, who writes “The Ethicist” column for the New York Times. For me, to engage in the occasional duplicity, while not advisable, is at some point, one would hope all too infrequent, reality of our imperfect lives and human interactions. To shamelessly justify mendacity, and rationalize it as an acceptable tactic in the arbitration process, goes beyond the common flaws of poor management, mishandled player relations or moral ambiguity, to arrive at scumbaggery. Nice work.

—In the same MSG Season Preview Special, how about Rangers Coach Tom Renney — whose polished communication skills, honest humility, and charmingly intelligent and thoughtful charisma never ceases to amaze — describing Brendan Shanahan as quote, “An icon,” unquote. Not only is Tom dead right, of course, but in another life he was most certainly a Poet.

—The size, relative mobility and poise of Ranger Hugh Jessiman.

—The poise and puckhandling ability goalie Al Montoya displayed in the first period…which he left behind in the lockeroom before returning to the ice for the second period.

—After Avery crashed the net and interfered with Johhny Oduya causing Oduya to fall back and slam against Devils’ goaltender Weekes, whose bell was obviously rung as a result, and had to be helped off the ice and leave the game, I wondered if Coach Renney later speaks to Sean advising against the behavior, proposing the resulting penalty not worth the loss of a talented player, not to mention playing shorthanded for the subsequent two minutes.

—The technique of the MSG camera crew and their director calling their cues still suck sweaty shinpads and caused us to miss a goal, choosing instead to treat us to B-roll of some youngster in camp. Friendly suggestion: Take the camera guys, producer and director to Toronto or Montreal to sit, watch, listen and learn how to shoot hockey right.

—Marc Staal is still not ready, it’s becoming evident he may never be, and it’s time for the Rangers to cut their losses. While I would agree with the common wisdom that it takes longer to develop defensemen to the NHL level than it does forwards, and personally I believe defense is a considerably more difficult position to play. S%$t, I don’t care who the blueliner in question is —all too frequently it’s near impossible for D-men to play effectively given the way NHL referees have taken to call games in this post lockout, new rules NHL. But as concerns Stall, I’m just not seeing it.

—Jason Strudwick, while probably already shopping for an apartment in Hartford, or visiting travelocity.com for the best rates on Swissair, is a Dude with a capital ‘D’.

—Did anyone see Devils’ assistant coach Larry Robinson sidle up to Kaspar in the runway leading to the players’ dressing rooms between the second and third periods? Do you think Larry was talking to him about subjects in common —anxiety disorder, or the name of a good psychotherapist Kaspar might recommend. Or perhaps, what I suspect, Larry was Lucifer Lamoriello’s go-between in floating the idea to Kaspar of moving to Newark. If the Rangers can’t make sufficient cap room to keep Darius on Broadway, let’s hope the pride of Lithuania finds himself on his skates where he’s productive and appreciated. I’d rather see Kaspar become a Devil than suffer another season in a north-central Connecticut sinkhole. He deserves better Slats.

—On first glance, Anisimov — in addition to sounding like an after-dinner drink that would get you unexpectedly hammered and give you a Grade II hangover the next morning — looks like the real thing.

Final Thought…

Trade Joe Micheletti for Deb Kaufman. While I know their current job descriptions aren’t exactly the same. And it goes without saying yet merits saying anyway that the Rangers broadcasts haven’t been the same since the dark day John Davidson forsook his priceless on-air chemistry with Sam Rosen and vacated the booth to find his nirvana in St. Louis. …St. Louis, John? I can’t help but believe Deb would soften our loss, there’s some special quality to Deb’s camera friendly persona that obviates her name is actually Deb-BAH…Kauf-man. She took her early inspiration to pursue television journalism from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. (I’m not making that up.) And I won’t attempt to aptly describe the sexily, slightly askew line of Deb’s mouth which somehow seems appropriate to an attractive, genuinely warm woman who happens to be a career television sports professional covering hockey. For that, of course, I’d call on the Bard of Broadway, Tom Renney.

Rangers 4
Devils 3

Get Your Program, ‘ere!

The waiting is over…okay, it’s only preseason, but it’s still hockey, still Rangers, still the Garden.

While tonight, I’ll be watching the Blueshirts take on their rivals from across the Hudson, snug in my luxury box suite situated directly over the Rangers-shoot-twice-side blue line of my living room, I will be in attendance when they take on the newly constructed Flyers tomorrow evening. THANKS, HOWARD!

Top Ten Things to Ensure You’re Present at Tonight’s Puck-Drop

1. Scott Gomez in a Blueshirt carrying the biscuit end-to-end against the Lucifer-, excuse me, Lou Lamoriello-led Devils. C’mon, you still don’t think anyone standing behind the Devils bench, whether named Sutter, Robinson, or Shemp, actually runs the team, do you?

2. Picture this…from left-to-right…Avery-Drury-Shanahan

3. Jagr

4. Jagr

5. The Return of Kaspar

6. Broadway Debut of the RBK Edge Uniform System…Not. Bulletin: Anything stupid enough to be called a Uniform System, you can be certain is f*&^%’ed. But who can be surprised by this, coming from the company that brought ‘The Pump’ back for their line of RBK skates.

7. What sartorial flourish dapper Rangers coach Tom Renney will sport.

8. The irrepressible bluster, speed and spark of one Irishman, Ryan Callahan.

9. You think of something, I’m running dry…

10. New kid on the block, Artem Anisimov…haven’t seen the footage, but certainly sounds good. Make mine a double.

If you happened to catch today’s New York Times article by Lynn Zinser on the opening of Rangers’ training camp, perhaps, like me, you had to catch your breath at the trenchant and challenging reporting that Zinser once again displayed in carrying out her journalistic duties as the Times’ NYR beat writer.

An excerpt from the NYT article:

“Gomez and Drury certainly came with price tags that brought flashbacks to the era before the salary cap, more than $7 million each. Between them, they have won three Stanley Cup titles. They were accustomed to being offensive stars on their previous teams: Gomez with the Devils and Drury with the Sabres. Drury was Buffalo’s captain. But they also arrived saying the right things about fitting into a team with a dynamic captain, and a vocal assistant captain in Shanahan.”

Yes, and a new hockey season arrives with the Times’ dismally dull articles, penned by Ms. Zinser, who at the very least could get her facts right —Drury was actually a co-captain with Buffalo. In one of the more interesting arrangements, he was the Sabres’ road captain, while Daniel Briere held that responsibility for the team’s home games.

On top of that, and it would seem if only for the sake of a pretty, but ambiguous and ill-chosen adjective, Zinser describes Henrik Lunquist as “the ascendant goalie Henrik Lundqvist.” Ascendant? — a word whose primary meaning connotes rising or moving upward. Babe, the guy is a two-time Vezina Trophy finalist, an Olympic gold medalist with Sweden and the cornerstone of the Ranger team’s success for the past two seasons running. Next time, Dictionary.com.

Granted, the Times has never been known to be a bastion of NHL coverage, much less an entertaining or insightful read about Rangers’ hockey. No Brooks or Dellapina to be found there. But still, for a paper that distinguishes itself in so many other areas of domestic and international reporting, historically and contemporaneously, is this really the best they can do?

A few years ago, Kristin Huckshorn, the New York Times deputy sports editor, stated in an interview about Zinszer, “Lynn is so curious and has such a broad, smart view. If the pack goes right, she goes left. She always says, `if a story is going to bore me, it’s going to bore the readers.’”

Uh-huh, and on what oxygen-deprived planet do you get your news, hockey, or otherwise?

Lynn might do well to apply that journalistic quality control Huckshorn refers to —”Huckshorn” ? — to her next Rangers article. At least before the season opener when one would realistically expect her to have something newsworthy to write about.

Newly Single, BroadwayHockey.com Favorite Avery at Fashion Week with GQ Blueshirt Shanahan

However it went down, of course, is of no import whatsoever. The only good thing about almost any break-up, after all, is the day you meet someone who is indefinably better, hotter, smarter and lovelier than the one you were sure this time was all that, and who, just as mysteriously as their predecessor one day appeared and seemingly the next did a Houdini, like another kind of magic, plain and simple, fantastically appears and somehow sticks. Because, c’mon, even the most confirmed and dire wolves of either gender among us know that the shared warmth of the den is where one sups the sweetest and the best. Tennessee Williams once said as much — don’t ask me which play — and of course said it much better. But while Tennessee obviously worked Broadway, he never played center for the Rangers, famously preferred sailors to both actors and actresses, and to the best of my knowledge, never crashed a net.

That said, we’ve got Sean’s back, as any good fan or friend immediately would. And if we were hangin’, we’d invite him over for beers to watch the cinematic masterpiece Swingers, which Liman, Favreau and Vaughn have yet, and may never, top, followed by a round-robin tournament of Sega Hockey. The version where the players could draw blood and take slappers that would break the glass behind the net.

But Aves, whatever your pain, if causal to the sartorial, you needn’t hurt yourself by way of the unflattering specs. Please.

After all, you’re Sean F#^%-’in’ Avery. You’ve got it going on, north-south, in the corners and mucking the crease. You don’t hesitate to shoot, find your share of twine, and will dish shrewdly, when necessary, to the better positioned mate. And yes, Aves. You’re at Fashion Week. Where Demi and Maggie hang out in the front row with Hilary (the latter, of Clint’s boxing film, not to be confused with Senator Pantsuit) to do what women do… Chat, sniff out the babes strutting the runway and assist the remaining single BFF among them to find a suitable slamstick. And we’re not talking Sher-wood or Koho, Aves. But someone whom Hil could trade body blows with between humps for Oscar. Hell yes, why not you?

Take a note from the veteran Shanahan, so effortlessly smart in the midnight-blue button down and golf tan. For goodness sakes, that’s why Shanny — in place of his stunning wife, who happens to put the wan Seventh Avenue girls to shame — so generously invited you out with him in the first place. Because Shanahan, like the Iceman, like the unanimity of Rangers fans who understood your importance to the team the very first game you stepped on the ice in a blue sweater, we knew, even if Slats was foolish enough for a nano-second to pretend he didn’t, you’re worth it!

You’re f*&^%’in worth it, Aves!

Besides, eyewear or no, one can’t reasonably imagine fashion models or convicted celebutards would ultimately be good for your game, anyway, Sean. It’s plainly evident you’re a man of intense focus, and so it’s not surprising you were seriously involved with an actress, since dramatic artists, like elite-level athletes, perform best when playing in an unconscious, but paradoxically zen-like state of concentration. So perhaps it is advisable to stick with the honeys from Hollywood. Who knows? Granted, I’m just a fan. Not the weird old dude on the television hawking eHarmony. Or maybe find yourself a nice, simple babe raised on a dairy farm in Saskatchewan. If indeed, such a one in that particular province can be found. Let me know, I’ve never been.

Pushing these matters aside, Sean, have a terrific camp. We’ll see you and your Ranger mates October 4th, at the Garden season opener when the team starts its way towards a fifth Cup — the one, appearing unexpectedly and then unforgettably, which last year got away. But in your arms and hoisted high above your head on Garden ice this spring, we know will look just great.