It all started when an assistant stage manager offered Sean Avery some pizza.

What happened next will surprise nobody who has followed the hockey career of the former NHL agitator.

Avery, who was preparing to make his off-Broadway debut in the play "Negative Is Positive," reacted poorly to the offer of a slice. He said "No," and apparently thought the assistant had called him an "a-hole" as opposed to simply offering him some food.

He went on a tirade and quit the show.

“He said I was ‘talking s–t’ and said I was ‘so full of s–t,'” the assistant stage manager, Natalie, told The New York Post's Page Six. “That’s when I realized that I was dealing with a madman.”

The play's director also caught some of the brunt of Avery's pizza anger. "Don’t you know who I am?!" Avery shouted at Andreas Robertz. "I think something snapped in him," Robertz told Page Six.

The aptly named "Negative is a Positive" is about an interracial married couple and Avery was playing the lead character's best friend. The show opens on Thursday with an understudy playing Avery's part.

"He's a playwright's worst nightmare," said the play's author Christy Smith-Sloman.

Perhaps Smith-Sloman should swap some stories with former Rangers coach John Tortorella if they're ever looking to put Avery on stage again.

Lesson No.1: Don't offer Sean Avery this kind of food just before his Off-Broadway debut <a href="http://t.co/fjeSsf4lUf">http://t.co/fjeSsf4lUf</a> <a href="http://t.co/H8WVDwYhZf">pic.twitter.com/H8WVDwYhZf</a> —@cbcsports

Keselowski may want to be Senna or Earnhardt but he's more like Sean Avery, right down to the turtling. —@TonyJWriter