Dave Andreychuk (Murillo Pyramid Rank = #123)
Adjusted Stats
1982-1983 Buf 44 GP 11 goals 19 assists 30 points 0.68 PPG
1983-1984 Buf 80 GP 30 goals 34 assists 64 points 0.80 PPG
1984-1985 Buf 66 GP 25 goals 24 assists 49 points 0.75 PPG
1985-1986 Buf 82 GP 29 goals 40 assists 69 points 0.84 PPG
1986-1987 Buf 79 GP 21 goals 41 assists 63 points 0.79 PPG
1987-1988 Buf 82 GP 25 goals 41 assists 66 points 0.81 PPG
1988-1989 Buf 57 GP 24 goals 20 assists 44 points 0.76 PPG
1989-1990 Buf 75 GP 34 goals 36 assists 70 points 0.94 PPG
1990-1991 Buf 82 GP 33 goals 30 assists 63 points 0.77 PPG
1991-1992 Buf 82 GP 37 goals 45 assists 82 points 1.01 PPG
1992-1993 Buf/Tor 81 GP 45 goals 37 assists 82 points 1.01 PPG
1993-1994 Tor 81 GP 49 goals 43 assists 92 points 1.13 PPG
1994-1995 Tor 82 GP 39 goals 28 assists 67 points 0.82 PPG
1995-1996 Tor/NJ 76 GP 27 goals 28 assists 56 points 0.73 PPG
1996-1997 NJ 82 GP 28 goals 36 assists 64 points 0.78 PPG
1997-1998 NJ 75 GP 16 goals 40 assists 56 points 0.75 PPG
1998-1999 NJ 52 GP 18 goals 15 assists 33 points 0.63 PPG
1999-2000 Bos/Col 77 GP 22 goals 18 assists 40 points 0.52 PPG
2000-2001 Buf 74 GP 22 goals 15 assists 37 points 0.50 PPG
2001-2002 TB 82 GP 25 goals 20 assists 45 points 0.54 PPG
2002-2003 TB 72 GP 23 goals 16 assists 39 points 0.55 PPG
2003-2004 TB* 82 GP 25 goals 22 assists 47 points 0.57 PPG
2005-2006 TB 42 GP 6 goals 12 assists 18 points 0.44 PPG
Adjusted Playoff Stats
1982-1983 Buf 4 GP 1 goal 0 assists 1 point 0.20 PPG
1983-1984 Buf 2 GP 0 goals 1 assist 1 point 0.45 PPG
1984-1985 Buf 5 GP 3 goals 2 assists 5 points 0.90 PPG
1987-1988 Buf 6 GP 2 goals 3 assists 5 points 0.75 PPG
1988-1989 Buf 5 GP 0 goals 3 assists 3 points 0.52 PPG
1989-1990 Buf 6 GP 2 goals 4 assists 6 points 0.99 PPG
1990-1991 Buf 6 GP 2 goals 2 assists 3 points 0.57 PPG
1991-1992 Buf 7 GP 1 goal 3 assists 3 points 0.50 PPG
1992-1993 Tor 21 GP 10 goals 6 assists 16 points 0.74 PPG
1993-1994 Tor 18 GP 5 goals 5 assists 10 points 0.55 PPG
1994-1995 Tor 7 GP 3 goals 2 assists 4 points 0.63 PPG
1996-1997 NJ 1 GP 0 goals 0 assists 0 points 0.00 PPG
1997-1998 NJ 6 GP 1 goal 0 assists 1 point 0.19 PPG
1998-1999 NJ 4 GP 2 goals 0 assists 2 points 0.55 PPG
1999-2000 Col 17 GP 4 goals 2 assists 6 points 0.35 PPG
2000-2001 Buf 13 GP 1 goal 2 assists 4 points 0.27 PPG
2002-2003 TB 11 GP 4 goals 4 assists 7 points 0.65 PPG
2003-2004 TB* 23 GP 1 goal 17 assists 18 points 0.78 PPG
Career - 1687 GP, 614 goals, 660 assists, 1276 points, 0.76 PPG
Career-Highs - 49 goals (93-94); 45 assists (91-92); 92 points (93-94); 1.12 PPG (93-94)
Avg. (23 seasons) - 73 GP, 27 goals, 29 assists, 55 points, 0.76 PPG
Peak Avg. (89-97) - 80 GP, 37 goals, 35 assists, 72 points, 0.90 PPG, 0 Cups
Playoff Career - 162 GP, 42 goals, 56 assists, 95 points, 0.59 PPG
Playoff-Highs - 10 goals (92-93); 17 assists (03-04); 18 points (03-04); 0.99 PPG (89-90)
Accolades - None
All-Star Teams - None
1-time Stanley Cup Champion
As with many of the players who round out the Pyramid, there's no possible way I could make a case that Dave Andreychuk was the 124th best player to ever play the game, and certainly not the 124th most talented. He was a lumbering skater with limited passing abilities, a good but not great shot, and average defensive instincts. But he was also a force on the power play, a big guy who was difficult to move from in front of the net, someone like Phil Esposito had a nose for garbage goals.
Andreychuk's final career numbers make him a second or third-liner on the Props For Sticking Around All-Star Team. 614 goals and 1,276 career points are impressive until you realize that it took Andreychuk twenty-three seasons and nearly 1,700 games to get there. However, inflated as they are by playing for so long, Andreychuk's totals are still hard to ignore for a left-winger. He never once was considered the best or even second-best left-winger in the league, but for a stretch of about four or five years he morphed from a 30-goal, 55-point guy into a 40+ goal, 85-point player.
Part of this may have been due to the centers he was blessed to have in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lafontaine and Hawerchuk were feeding him during his late Sabre days, and then Andreychuk joined a Maple Leafs team that was already on the brink of contending and took them to another level by providing a scoring winger for Doug Gilmour, another one of the league's best passers. Andreychuk was lucky to have a great center, but he also took advantage by becoming what in today's game would be called a "power forward": a big left-winger who could pot timely goals and also muck it up in the dirty areas to battle for loose pucks.
The teams Andreychuk was on were always decent but rarely great: the Sabres were constant first or second-round fodder; the Maple Leafs had their back-to-back years in the Conference finals but then began to taper off, and the Devils were in their run of first-round chokes when Andreychuk was with them. Part of this may have been due to the fact that Andreychuk, despite his reputation, was actually a terrible playoff performer: he never once averaged more than an adjusted PPG and scored only 42 goals and 95 points in 162 games.
All of that changed though when Andreychuk joined the Tampa Bay Lightning and became their captain, relieving a too-young Vincent Lecavalier of those duties. The Lightning began to gel, and in 2003-2004, a graying Andreychuk captained them to a Stanley Cup win, scoring an impressive 18 points in the playoffs after only 47 in the regular season.
It was a fitting end for someone that no one ever would have described as elite: Andreychuk reached hockey's pinnacle by virtue of sticking around. I give him credit for being a consistent mucker and one of the great "ugly-goal" scorers in NHL history. Ultra-talented? No, but a good career nonetheless.
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