Looks like hockey star and Vogue intern Sean Avery is climbing the publishing ladder with remarkable agility, advancing from lowly intern to guest editor at mensvogue.com in just a few short weeks. In an online diary for the site, the New York Ranger gets shirtless in the Vogue fashion closet and dishes about his unlikely passion. “To me it’s simple: I like clothes. Always have,” he says. “I don’t watch sports. I don’t read about sports … Over breakfast in hotels when the Rangers are on the road, I read the Style section in The New York Times.” And Sean, who swapped his million-dollar Rangers salary for minimum wage (for the summer, at least), reveals that money’s not everything, waxing philosophical about the creative reward he experienced assisting on his first photo shoot. “As I watched the shoot progress,” he writes, “I had to wonder: Was the feeling this designer had — the pride of having his creations shot for the pages of Vogue — anything like the feeling I had after we beat the Devils in round one? … Was a young woman’s anticipation of a night on the town in her favorite new dress just a different version of a 12-year-old boy watching his favorite player No. 16 dominate New Jersey in five games? The world may never know — but that’s what I think.”

OMG … I love this guy. It sounds like this stint for Vogue magazine is the perfect job for a professional hockey player that neither watches nor reads about sports and pontificates about the connection between a woman’s anticipation of a night on the town and a young boy’s fascination with watching hockey. Seriously … he is my new favorite person ever. But wait … there are even more photos to be had of the stocky Left Wing New York Ranger “working” at the offices of Men’s Vogue …

The short pants! Ye gods, I love the short pants:

So … just how does a professional hockey player go about securing an internship at (arguably) the greatest fashion magazine in the world? Why, he writes the head honcho herself, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and asks for a job:

Earlier this year — just before the playoffs, actually — I wrote to the editor in chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, and expressed my desire to intern for the magazine once my team won the Stanley Cup. After just a couple of days I got the answer I was looking for.

Yes, fortunately for Avery, the Rangers got cut from the play-offs (and the mighty Detroit Red Wings would go on to win the Stanley Cup this year) so he was able to realize his fashion dreams … and just what did Sean Avery learn from his experience working at Vogue?

What did I learn over the last month? Or, as everybody seems to want to know, What’s working at Vogue really like? Here’s what it comes down to: I make millions of dollars a year at a “job” that I consider to be pure fun. The people at Vogue don’t have that kind of salary. What they do have is a group of people working creatively and relentlessly because of their strong passion and love for fashion. I would challenge you to find another workplace — outside of sports or nursing — that has that. I hope to play hockey for several years to come. But after that I want to be a part of something creative — either styling or editing at a magazine. Being guest editor for Mensvogue.com this week is really the first time that I’ve been responsible for putting content together myself. And it’s opened up a new interest that I didn’t even know I had. So that’s what I learned. And if you’d like to learn something, consider this: If you feel like teasing this hockey player about an obsession of his that you might think is a little unusual, go right ahead. Just know that you may get your ass kicked by a very expensive pair of shoes — and that they’ll probably match both my belt and my shirt.

Again, I say, I love this man. You have to give him props for going after his dream, no matter what others may say about it (I imagine he can look forward to lots of ribbing from his New York Rangers teammates as they hang out in the locker room), and for staying true to himself. A lot of people could learn a lesson from Sean Avery.

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