Former Ranger Sean Avery’s résumé is longer than your average retired athlete.
The 36-year-old Ontario, Canada, native has dabbled in restaurants, held an internship at Vogue, consulted with fashion labels and even worked in the advertising department at Playboy.
But he hasn’t lasted long at any one place — and sources tell The Post it’s because of his hot temper and inability to get along with others. In fact, since his name has been taken off the sports pages, it’s shown up in Page Six for storming out of his theater debut and getting arrested for throwing rocks at cars, just days before his October 2015 wedding.
And then there are the lawsuits. His wife, model Hilary Rhoda, 29, has sued her mother, who was also her manager, over lost wages. Her mother countersued, saying Avery is the one to blame.
Now sources are worried he might torpedo Rhoda’s storied career due to his antics.
“He is all smoke and mirrors. He doesn’t have a lot of friends in any line of work,” says a former teammate.
Marianne Rhoda’s lawsuit charges that Avery’s “employment was sporadic and [his] prospects for employment were highly speculative.”
First, he landed at Lipman advertising agency as the chief strategic officer in late 2012, handling clients like Stuart Weitzman and 7 for All Mankind.
The agency abruptly shut down in September 2013, following a bankruptcy filing.
“Sean charmed Lipman into giving him a position and started terrorizing everyone in the office,” says an insider. “He is very focused on what he wants to get done. He will stop at nothing to get it done, even if there are casualties along the way. He creates conflict and pushes it too far.”
In 2014, Avery signed up for “Dancing With the Stars,” where he was ousted in the second elimination during a two-part season premiere and blamed producers for forcing him off after he had a heated conversation with one of them.
That same year, he had a little-publicized stint at Playboy magazine as the director of luxury in the advertising department. That lasted only five months.
Then, came his interests in two Tribeca restaurants, Warren 77 and Tiny’s and the Bar Upstairs, which opened in 2009 and 2011, respectively.
Avery’s partners, including Rangers’ goalie Henrik Lundqvist and restaurateur Matt Abramcyk of Beatrice Inn fame, bought him out because they had “a different vision of success,” Page Six reported in 2013.
“For the betterment of the business, they paid him to go away. He got bought out,” a source says.
Although Avery interned for Vogue in 2008, and consulted for menswear brand Commonwealth Utilities, his much ballyhooed fashion opportunities ultimately led nowhere.
Writer Christy Smith-Sloman found herself the target of the hothead after he walked off the set of her 2014 off-Broadway play, “Negative Is Positive,” just days before opening night. Avery had been tapped to play an athlete, but the show would go on without him.
“He is really volatile,” says Smith-Sloman. “He didn’t like to be criticized, and he’d zero in on people he didn’t like.” The writer says he snapped on a lighting guy who suggested Avery’s green shirt wasn’t working with the set. He blew up at a 20-year-old assistant who offered him a slice of pizza, reducing the woman to tears. Avery then bombarded Smith-Sloman with text messages, threatening to sue for defamation, saying: “See you in court, u crazy pig.”
When it came to hockey, Avery thrived on pugilism. It’s that fiery attitude that made him a polarizing figure within the sport: Fans applauded his tough play, but inside the locker room, he made teammates bristle. He carries that manner into his regular life as well.
Friends of Rhoda are concerned that Avery’s volatility and Svengali-like influence over the all-American beauty is sinking her prospects, too.
“I feel like her career is going superdownhill at the moment,” says a source. “I see a decline, especially this year.”
Her latest modeling gigs include an advertisement for a Dallas shopping mall and the Lands’ End swim catalog — hardly the international Vogue and W covers of her heyday. Rhoda’s last truly prestigious campaign, for Chopard, was the final piece of business steered by her mother.
A former member of Rhoda’s team at IMG models says when the blue-eyed Maryland stunner joined the agency in 2005, she became one of its “top girls.” Under her mother’s management, she walked the runway at Balenciaga and Chanel and, in 2007, landed a lucrative contract with Estée Lauder. That deal would last seven years, and, according to a source, add a whopping $12 million to her bank account.
So when she met Avery in 2009 at the opening party for Warren 77, the two were on opposing ends of their careers.
Avery, who first played for the New York Rangers from 2007-2008, was back on the team — tail between his legs — after having been released from the Dallas Stars. This followed a six-game suspension over a controversial press-conference comment before a game against the Calgary Flames. Calgary player Dion Phaneuf was dating Avery’s ex, actress Elisha Cuthbert, and Avery said, “I just want to comment on how it’s become like a common thing in the NHL for guys to fall in love with my sloppy seconds.”
At the time, Rhoda was dating then-Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez.
“They went to some Broadway shows and out to dinner at Del Frisco’s. We were thrilled,” says a source of Hilary’s low-key relationship with the handsome football player.
But once Avery started pursuing the leggy brunette, she iced out Sanchez.
“From the start I got a bad feeling. Their relationship was volatile,” says the source, who adds the two split and made up several times. “She would throw his stuff down the trash shoot and be hysterical.” (Both Rhoda and Avery’s spokespeople declined comment on this article.)
In 2011, when Avery was due to move into Rhoda’s downtown apartment, he asked for her financial information. Court documents indicate that her mother’s attorney was concerned he could gain tenant rights and asked Avery not to pay rent. Avery freaked out, the source says.
“He went absolutely berserk and had a meltdown. They broke up,” says the source. But the pair eventually reunited. And Avery roared back into her life with a vengeance.
Rhoda had been asked to read for Adam Sandler’s 2011 movie “Just Go With It,” but, according to a source, Avery objected. The part went to New York model Brooklyn Decker.
After Rhoda fired her mother, her beau brought in his pal Adam Campbell as her manager. Under his influence, she started taking not-so prestigious jobs like one for swimwear line Solid & Striped, which also featured Avery.
“[Avery] had his own agenda and knew that Marianne had already shot down many of his ideas. He knew she would interfere in what he wanted,” says the source.
The same source says Rhoda fired her mother in early 2014 via a text message. She sued Marianne, claiming she “manipulated her familial role to improperly seize — and then abuse — enormous power over Hilary’s finances” to the tune of $2 million. The suit alleges it was Rhoda’s team at IMG, not her mother, who secured the Estée Lauder contract, and that Marianne forged her daughter’s signature to withdraw money from Rhoda’s accounts.
In January, Marianne fired back with a countersuit claiming that her daughter is withholding funds and calls it a breach of contract.
Both parties deny the allegations.
“[Sean] is calling the shots now,” the source says.
Rhoda hasn’t done a major runway show since February 2015.
Adding to the drama, a source says Avery has managed to “destroy any relationship that Hilary has with friends and family.”
When Rhoda’s maternal grandfather had a stroke and passed away in 2014, she didn’t attend the funeral. She served her mother with the lawsuit less than two weeks later. Rhoda’s mother and brother did not attend the October wedding. Instead, her father, whom she had been estranged from since her parents divorced when she was a teen, walked her down the aisle.
The family friend says Avery followed Marianne from an August SoulCycle class in Water Mill, LI, and flipped her off.
So what does the elegant Rhoda see in the fist-fighting brute?
She told Hamptons magazine that she loves his candor.
“He gets a bad rep sometimes, because he isn’t afraid to speak his mind,” Rhoda told the magazine. “And I think that’s one of his best qualities. Sometimes it can hurt him, because some people don’t understand his humor, or they don’t understand that he’s not being totally serious. Some people misunderstand him and think he’s a jerk, but if you know him or you’re friends with him, he’s one of the kindest people and one of the gentlest people. He’d do anything for anybody, and he’s very generous.”
But the source sees it another way.
“She was young when she met him. She had believed in him from the start and was so enamored. I think she thought he was going to be the one to make her a star. I think she lost touch of who she is. She thinks he’s so cool and knows everything about life. It’s bizarre. She has fallen for his lies.”
His former teammate notes that Avery keeps finding “people to f - - k over,” but he’s also clever, even with his March 2012 NHL retirement announcement on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live,” when he declared that he “threw [his] skates in the Hudson.”
“He had to get ahead of the story. If he could have managed his work ethic and kept a lid on his antics, he still would have been playing. It’s not retirement if nobody wants to sign you to a contract. That’s called not having a job.
“Just look at his wedding list. None of his so-called best friends for the last 15 years were even at his wedding,” notes the former teammate.
“He was kicked off of every team he’s ever been on: Detroit, Los Angeles, the Rangers and then Dallas. He couldn’t sustain a relationship with a team.”
Adds the former friend: “Now he has imposed that bulldog toxic mentality in his relationship with Hilary.”