The NHL has more pressing issues than Sean Avery being a nuisance.

It was while I was watching Chris Neil repeatedly punching Pittsburgh Penguins players in the back of the head Monday night that I found myself laughing right out loud.

Not because Neil was doing his part -- along with the unproductive Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza -- to ensure the Ottawa Senators would lose a third straight playoff game to the Penguins and set themselves up for what perhaps losing four straight in the first round, but because in the breaks of that game and seemingly every other broadcast across the hockey playoffs nearly everyone was bemoaning the loss of "integrity" in the game via Sean Avery's antics.

I won't waste your time here, you saw it, and you know what I'm talking about it. Was it unusual? Well, yes. Was it childish? You could call it that. Was it worth of an instant rule change by the NHL? No, that was a ridiculous overreaction brought on in part because it was Avery and because the New York Ranger forward not only gets under the skin of opponents, but he also agitates the commissioner and his deputies like few others could even imagine let alone accomplish.

Imagine, changing a rule n the middle of the playoffs (and of course cementing the long-stated belief that the rules really are different in the playoffs because the league just changed them) because a player did differently what most every player who stands in front of a hockey net does on a regular basis. What, you never saw a player blatantly interfere with the rhythm and vision of a goalie attempting to make a save?

Now if you say you never saw a player wave a stick across a goalie's line of sight, admittedly with his butt facing the goal cage, you never saw a hockey game let alone a playoff game. If you never saw a player wave his glove in a goalie's face or hack at his catching glove with his stick or run him through the crease or fall backward into him or dive bomb his knee from nothing more than the weight of an opponent's breath propelling him forward, well the same observation applies.

What Avery did Sunday to New Jersey Devils goaltender Martin Brodeur was what players do all the time in hockey. The amazing thing is that he found a way to do it legally, within the rules that are written and even within the ones that are unwritten but applied. And for that he's the damnation of hockey as we know it?

Spare me.

Neil, through the course of his career, has delivered more never-saw-it-coming shots to the head than George W. Bush on Comedy Central, but he's never once in his career been suspended. But then he's doing "whatever it takes to win" isn't he?

I'm not just singling out Neil here. He's a reasonably honest hockey player who gives what he has, but it's impossible not to say that he stretches the rules a bit.

It's also a given that he and others are applauded for it.

He's not alone either. From smashing players face first into the glass to ramming their heads into the stanchions at the end of the benches, we see players "doing whatever it takes to win" on a regular basis. It happens when we see players rammed from behind with six or seven crosschecks to the back in an effort to "clear the crease". We see it when during the endless scrums in front of the net whenever the goalie makes a save in close quarters. We see it when players deliver a leather "face wash" to an opponent after the play is whistled dead or when others take exception to "clean hits" whenever a teammate is knocked down but then defended with a quick slash or a shoulder pad to the mouth in close quarters. All part of the game, eh?

So what's the rue and cry about what Avery did? It's not like he slashed an injured player on the hip after the whistle the way Boston's Milan Lucic did to Montreal's Mike Komisarek and has now achieved hero status in Boston for his actions. It's not like he blindsided Daniel Alfredsson with a blow to the side of the head the way Mark Bell did in Toronto's final home game of the season.

It's also not like the way the late, great and beloved Roger Neilson used to use hand signals in Peterborough to have an orchestrated power failure in the arena whenever he needed a time out. It's certainly not like he's wearing oversized equipment, or an extra long sweater or wings or even netting between his pads the way that goalies have and may still be doing even as these playoffs roll along. Heck, it's not even like the way Dominik Hasek used to "drop" his goal stick in the crease seemingly whenever he had slid out of position, thereby providing one last obstruction to the shooter when he least expected it.

What Sean Avery did was simple really, he invented a new way to try and distract an opponent. That he did it in an innovative and creative way, in a way that did not even "bend" the written rules of the game might offend some people and even annoy the people who both write and administer them, but he certainly did not impugn the integrity of the game.

Now he's done that in the past when he hit players from behind. He'd done it when he took one of his countless and despicable dives, he did it when he tossed ‘F’ bombs and water bottles at the fans and he did that when his antics prompted the Los Angeles Kings to fire him and send him home.

He's clearly not a Ron Francis-type player and he's certainly not alone in those kinds of actions.

Truth be told with all the diving, hits from behind, dirty "finishing" checks and all the other abuses listed above, the game should be looking a lot harder at its rule book and how it calls the game rather than this instance and Avery's role in it.

Making revisions there would restore a lot more to hockey's reputation than rewriting a rule to rein in a pest.