ANDREYCHUK’S ULTIMATE GOAL
Scoring machine aimed at goalies hoping for rebounds to bury — just as former Leaf running mate Gilmour suspected all along
Dave Andreychuk led with his rear.
Drove that big old ass-et to the net and rode it right into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Which is not remotely an insult. Held his ground, did Andreychuk, in the trench warfare around opposition goal creases, an immovable object in the low slot vicinity, as defenders harassed him with lumber and gloves and full-body presses, more often than not bouncing off that six-foot-four, 220-pound frame.
“Lots of Montreal-Buffalo battles with Chris Chelios,” the 54-year-old recounts of his most vexatious nemesis. “I think his stick is still in the back of my neck.”
A guy gets gored and thrashed, the way Andreychuk played.
But all the manhandling in the world didn’t stop Andreychuk from scoring 640 goals, 14th on the all-time NHL list, top of the record tote board with 274 on the power play.
A prototypical power forward — if we’re ignoring aesthetics — but most of those goals came from within 10 feet of the net and were plug-ugly. Junk goals, a la Phil Esposito. Counted just as much, though.
“I got a lot of those, trust me,” says Andreychuk, flashing his new bejeweled hall of fame ring, which goes nicely with the Stanley Cup dazzler he finally won in 2004, as a role-player captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
That dog-on-a-bone instinct for the puck in close quarters is what got him to the NHL and kept him there for 23 seasons. He always understood it would be his entrée.
“I think it started in junior. As a 16-, 17-year-old, that’s where you kind of realize that’s where I was going to make my bread and butter, in front of the net. And not a lot of pretty goals, to be honest. I don’t know if there are highlight-reel goals, but at the same time you had to go there, you had to do the dirty work to get those goals, and that’s what I did.”
Certainly that’s how he floats to the surface, in memory.
“I hope that’s what I’m remembered as. Sometimes it’s not the easiest job. But for me, it’s the only way it was going to happen for me. So I played with a lot of good players who got me pucks in front of the net. I was able to finish them off.”
The yin to Doug Gilmour’s yang, in Andreychuk’s Toronto chapter.
“I wouldn’t call them junk goals,” Gilmour protests. “He paid the price for what he did, standing in front of the net all that time. You just couldn’t move him. My game is passing the puck and when we played together he was always there, waiting for it.”
On the same team in Toronto, New Jersey and Buffalo. But weirdly on the same line only with the Leafs despite their simpatico success.
“We were actually roommates in Buffalo,” says Gilmour. “I used to joke about it — aren’t they ever going to put us together?
“The thing is, you didn’t really know how good he was until you were on the same ice. He hardly ever shot wide. He didn’t pick corners. He’d shoot at the goalie because he wanted that rebound. A bona-fide goal scorer. He’d shoot at the goalie because he wanted that rebound.
“You might think he had a sleepy career. Then you look at the numbers and you go, wow.”
By the numbers, just a few plucked from the gaudy resume: 1,639 regular-season games, which puts him seventh in league history; 698 assists; NHL-high 53 goals between the Sabres and Leafs in 1992-93, 53 the following season; 19 seasons of 20 or more goals.
Gilmour always suspected that his linemate orchestrated those juicy rebounds one way or another. “Ab- solutely!” Andreychuk acknowledges. “Very true. Guys I played with knew that was happening — shoot at the rebounds and score the goals. I did it on purpose, yes.”
He had a gift for homely scoring but there was craftiness and toil to it, too. After practice, Andreychuk would stay late, deploying a stick with a blade shaved down almost in half, redirecting hundreds of pucks.
“Some of it’s God-given talent. Others, you work hard at it. I think all the players who played with me will attest there was a lot of shots after practice, trying to deflect pucks. Realizing what each (teammate) did, how they were going to shoot, on every team that I played is something I did and it paid off for me.”
Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock, who practically winces when his talent-laden players burst out on the rush, would have loved a fire hydrant like Andreychuk.
Those scoring-on-the-fly episodes were so rare for Andreychuk that he can recollect only one such occasion: “I did have one slapshot against (Arturs) Irbe down the wing. I think that was my only slapshot goal.”
But, oh, there are many other fine memories.
Like the night he turned the lamp red FIVE times in Boston, as a Sabre. That quintet of pucks occupies a prominent place in his office in Tampa, where he continues to serve as vice-president of corporate and community affairs — a link with the fans.
There’s been a lot of reminiscing over the weekend, as Andreychuk is inducted into the hall with the class of 2017, the formal ceremony Monday night.
He played for half a dozen NHL clubs but hereabouts will be most fondly remembered as a crucial part of those Pat Burns Leaf teams that went to final four in 1993 and 1994.
GM Cliff Fletcher pulled off that thieving trade, surrendering Grant Fuhr and a late-round draft pick.
He’d grown up just down the road, in Hamilton, chosen 16th by Scotty Bowman in the 1982 entry draft, which landed him pretty close to home in Buffalo. First time he’d ever been on a plane, attending that draft at the old Montreal Forum. Big lug of a kid from a blue-collar family.
“We never could afford to buy him new skates,” father Julian, employed in management for the steel mill, remembers. “Every year we’d get a pair of CCM Tacks from a boy that was a year ahead of him.’’
The work ethic was instilled early in Steeltown and the NHL seemed a distant dream.
“To be honest, we were hoping, when he went to Buffalo, we’d get a one-year contract.’’ A taste, that’s all.
But Julian Andreychuk knew his son had big pro qualities.
“He always had great hand-eye coordination and a pretty quick shot. And he was probably a much better skater than most give him credit for. Basically, he put his nose to the grindstone.”
It’s the father who reveals that Andreychuk played his entire career with braces on both knees after suffering ligament damage in his second year with Buffalo. “I remember the doctor coming to the house to measure him for them.”
Those of us who covered Andreychuk in his Toronto phase never even realized it; just saw the lumbering galoot of a skater labouring up the ice.
“Yeah, I blame the braces. That’s why I was so slow,” says Andreychuk, but he’s grinning.
Eleven years a Sabre, less than four as a Leaf, but those were special.
“I couldn’t ask for anything better to happen when I was here — two final fours, two 50-goal seasons. It was great to have my family and my friends in the stands every night. It’s a childhood dream to put the Leaf jersey on. Hard to believe that a 30-year-old guy walking into the dressing room can still shake. But that’s what happened to me, because I never knew what that dressing room looked like inside.”
It was a clammy, smelly, dungeon of a place at the old Maple Leaf Gardens. But it had soul.
So finally, in his ninth year of eligibility, Andreychuk rocks and rolls into the hall.
“When I look at the time it took to get in, it just makes it sweeter. There’s not much you can do to force their hand. You just hope that your time will come. I knew eventually it would happen.’’