By: Neil Simmons | Follow me on Twitter / X: @NSimmz
Hundreds of hockey players have donned the iconic Boston Bruins Spoked B sweater throughout the team’s first century in the NHL. Some played night in and night out for over a decade, forging a legacy with the Black and Gold and forever having their names intertwined with the franchise. Others came to town at the tail end of their careers chasing the Stanley Cup after already building a legacy elsewhere. Few built a legacy like Dave Andreychuk, whose career is inextricably bound to two franchises.
Andreychuk was drafted 16th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in the 1982 NHL Draft and made the team as a fresh-faced 19-year-old straight out of camp. Andreychuk immediately established himself as a productive NHL forward, scoring 37 points in 43 games, a near point-per-game pace, in his rookie season. He added his first Stanley Cup playoff goal in his first postseason game against Boston in Game Three of the Adams Division Finals.
From there, Andreychuk wasted no time becoming a vital piece of the Sabres core. A 38-goal, 80-point sophomore campaign effectively became the benchmark for his production in Buffalo, exceeding that total on three occasions and breaking the 30-goal mark seven times. His individual production did not translate into team postseason success, as the Sabres were largely pedestrian throughout the 1980s, only making it past the first round on one occasion: Andreychuk’s rookie year.
After 11 seasons with Buffalo, and in the middle of one of his most prolific seasons, Andreychuk was dealt to the Toronto Maple Leafs in order to get a shot at a Stanley Cup. Starting that season (‘92-’93) with 61 points in 52 games as a Sabre, “Uncle Dave” scored 38 points in 31 games to finish with 99 points. His 54 goals were a career-best, and his 32 power-play tallies led the NHL. He didn’t miss a beat in the playoffs, scoring 12 goals and 19 points in 21 playoff games, making a Conference Final for the first time. Toronto came within mere inches of the Stanley Cup Final but fell to Wayne Gretzky’s LA Kings in seven games.
1994 would be a deja vu year for Andreychuk and the Leafs. He matched the previous year’s scoring output with 99 points, and Toronto once again made the Western Conference Final but was eliminated by the Canucks in five. With Toronto declining after their consecutive playoff runs and Andreychuk’s individual performance beginning to slow, he was dealt to the New Jersey Devils in 1996 to hopefully get his Cup. In three and a half seasons with New Jersey, Andreychuk recorded 64 goals and 150 points in 224 games, but the Devils, coming off a Stanley Cup title in 1995, could not repeat the feat during Andreychuk’s tenure.
Following the 1999 season, Andreychuk signed a one-year deal with the promising Boston Bruins, hoping to add scoring depth and leadership to put them over the top. The B’s boasted a young core headlined by Joe Thornton, Jason Allison and Sergei Samsonov up front and the ageless Ray Bourque, also seeking his first Cup, on defense. The previous spring, the sixth-seeded Bruins won a playoff series but fell in the second round to Andreychuk’s former Sabres en route to a Cup Final appearance.
All hopes for a leap forward vanished early in the season, and the Bruins found themselves entering the new millennium well under .500. While his gamble with Boston did not pan out, Bruins general manager Harry Sinden ensured that his effort would not come in vain, packaging Andreychuk with Ray Bourque in a blockbuster deal to join the Colorado Avalanche and give both vets a legitimate shot at finally winning the Stanley Cup. In 63 total games, a Bruin, Andreychuk scored 19 goals and 33 points.
Andreychuk and Bourque joined a star-studded Avalanche team that had made at least the Conference Final in three of their four seasons since moving over from Quebec. While Bourque slotted in seamlessly, Andreychuk didn’t have quite as much success. He recorded just three points in 14 regular season games and five in seventeen playoff games, as Colorado was beaten by Dallas in Game Seven of the Western Conference Final for the second straight year. To rub salt in the wound for Dave, the Devils would defeat Dallas to win the Cup.
Opting to move on from Colorado, Andreychuk signed with the Sabres, returning to Buffalo after a seven-year hiatus. He scored 20 goals in 74 games in his lone homecoming season and three points in 13 playoffs, winning his first playoff series with Buffalo since his rookie season. The Sabres could not recapture lightning in a bottle from 1999, falling to Pittsburgh in the second round. A few weeks later, Ray Bourque finally won his first Stanley Cup as Colorado defeated the Devils in seven games.
With Andreychuk in the twilight years of his career and the hockey world expecting him to sign with another Cup contender, he made a surprising move to sign with the Tampa Bay Lightning. To that point in their history, the Lightning were a middling post-expansion franchise with only one playoff appearance in their first nine seasons and only won 24 games in 2000-01. Andreychuk believed in the project coach John Tortorella was building, and Tampa qualified for the playoffs within two seasons of his signing.
In year three, Andreychuk captained the Lightning to the best record in the Eastern Conference and stormed through the playoffs, losing just four games en route to the Stanley Cup Final. Facing Jarome Iginla and the red-hot Calgary Flames, Tampa trailed at every turn in the series but prevailed in seven games on home ice. Finally, after 1,597 regular season games (the second longest wait after Bourque), Andreychuk was a Stanley Cup Champion.
Andreychuk returned to Tampa following the 2004-05 lockout, but at age 42, father time finally caught up. After scoring at least 20 goals in each of his first three seasons with the Lightning, he sat at six goals in 42 games and was waived in January, retiring soon after.
Andreychuk finished his career with 640 goals and 1338 points in 1639 NHL games and held the record for career power-play goals with 274 since surpassed by Alex Ovechkin. Andreychuk was a franchise icon in both Buffalo and Tampa, having been inducted into both franchises’ Hall of Fames as well as the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2017. Since retirement, he has resided in Tampa and has worked with the Lighting organization as the VP of Community Affairs.
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