Life After Hockey: Greg Andrusak fishing for compromises

(Photo courtesy of Greg Andrusak)

Fittingly, a river was the boundary between the co-hosts of Greg Andrusak’s most momentous week in hockey.

Incidentally, it was none of the forward-liners comprising the Golden Triangle of the city he represented. Nor was it any of the streams he now oversees in the career his puck pursuits postponed.

It was one of North America’s household-name waterways, shadowed by the continent’s most massive metropolis. And, at the time, populated by two men with lasting cases for the GOAT crown in their respective on-ice positions.

Given its place in the world, the Hudson River cannot help connoting greatness. But uttering the word river on its own can evoke simplicity. A vision of running water and its natural inhabitants does not seem to have much to it.

Then again, untrained eyes have a similar way of deceiving hockey spectators. No matter how effortless a pack of pucksters may appear in their element, no matter how superhuman and resistant to outside disturbances they seem, they are subject to untold and often invisible variables.

Yes, team builders put each player in a given position because they see a natural fit. With that said, each individual signs up for the short end of a symbiotic relationship. With selective exceptions, everyone takes far less from the game than they give.

Furthering their modicum of control, they can never predict the twists in an environment and situation that fluctuates the way people claim their local weather does. A twist can influence a whole team’s course, or just that of an individual.

So at least Andrusak, 15 years after his final season, has less chaos going for him in one sense. He has settled in a permanent home market, back where he began in British Columbia. There he does and experiences a lot less moving than in his former vocation.

His last transaction came in the spring of 2016. He had followed his father’s footsteps to fisheries, and the two Andrusak generations headed a consulting firm in Nelson, B.C.

With Redfish Consulting Ltd., Harvey Andrusak, a three-decade veteran fisheries biologist, and Greg’s most noted collaborations included studies of Kootenay Lake, the province’s fifth-largest, and the spawning and exploitation therein.

In 2017, Harvey became the president of the BC Wildlife Federation. One year prior, Greg had shuffled from the inland town of Nelson to the coastal capital of Victoria and the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (MFLNRORD).

At his prior employer, he had logged a dozen years in his self-described “niche” as a consultant and risen to Redfish’s vice presidency. Ultimately, he told Pucks and Recreation, “I was starting to realize that I’m not getting any younger.”

At 46, he took his chance to make a bigger stride, and assumed the B.C. government’s provincial rivers biologist’s office. On some days, the lifelong defenseman follows a more goalie-like regimen, staying in one physical space at his desk. But like a puckster in some youth ranks, he will also venture to a more outer position, surveying his jurisdiction firsthand.

Regardless, he is a crucial figure in his other lifelong passion’s “Show.” He has his head on a swivel, ready to answer shots from any party and any direction.

All federal, regional, private, nonprofit or simply concerned groups with a stake in B.C.’s waters are in his web. The seven organizations he mentions by name in his LinkedIn summary hardly cover it all.

“The most important part about success in hockey is the same in government,” he said via phone from his office. “Collaboration is how we mainly do our business.”

That principle, combined with geography, lends favorable familiarity to Andrusak’s post-puck profession. He is back where a love of fishing inspired him to build on his biology bachelor’s toward a long-term career in inland freshwater management.

And where, as he said, he “grew up idolizing” Wayne Gretzky. That detail was the X-factor of the front end of his peerless week on ice.
 

A graze of greatness

One mid-April Sunday in 1999, the year Redfish was founded, Andrusak was a month removed from rejoining the Pittsburgh Penguins. The organization had drafted him out of the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 1988, only to summon him for 12 sporadic games between 1993-94 and 1995-96.

But they signaled they wanted the third-year European-leaguer back for a guarantee-free playoff push. Andrusak inked a new Pittsburgh pact on March 18, 1999, and worked his way to a regular roster spot beginning April 3. Paired with Bobby Dollas on the third tier, he saw action in each of the final seven regular-season games.

As it happened, the Penguins went a toe-curling 2-5-0 in that stretch. They could not keep the comparatively streaking Buffalo Sabres from leap-frogging them for seventh place in the Eastern Conference.

But by April 18, the eighth and final playoff seed was safely Pittsburgh’s. In addition, a 2-1 overtime triumph in Manhattan secured a high note to take cross-Hudson for the first-round series against top-dog New Jersey.

Despite playing a stay-at-home role where stats rarely sparkle, Andrusak had something of a career day. He sustained a plus-two rating by being on the ice for both Pittsburgh strikes, including captain and regular-season MVP Jaromir Jagr’s walk-off tally.

That meant Andrusak was one of a dozen players in action when Gretzky’s career abruptly ended.

The Rangers, like the other teams below the playoff line, had not caught nearly enough fire to catch up. And with Gretzky having announced his retirement, effective at season’s end, the April 18 card would be Andrusak’s only chance to play against his old idol.

Mixed emotions ensued for every soul in Madison Square Garden. The Penguins promptly offered the man of the hour a personalized handshake line.

From there, they took their place along the bench and watched The Great One’s second round of swan-song ceremonies. (Before the game, the hockey world stood still as players and spectators in other arenas watched the ceremonies remotely.)

The ice-level personnel, to say nothing of the press, all wanted a moment at that moment with No. 99. But being one man, the owner of 61 NHL records could only oblige so much. The majority, if not the entirety, of his postgame attention went to home allies or non-padded guests.

“I wish I would have been able to approach him at the time,” Andrusak admits, “just to say thank you. That would have been a capper in my mind.”

Instead, he accepted his lack of an open shooting lane and moved on to his Stanley Cup playoff debut. His week as a growing fish in a vast, crowded, spotlight-laden aquarium was only starting.

At the time, the then-29-year-old’s postseason experience featured two Turner Cup contests along Lake Erie with the IHL’s Cleveland Lumberjacks. Now he was fostering a career hot streak of Penguins lineup inclusion and preparing to meet the other half of the Hudson River rivalry.

The Devils, backstopped by future NHL career wins and shutouts leader Martin Brodeur, were looking to restore their contender’s persona. The 1995 champions had attained the conference’s top seed in 1998, only to fall to a scrappy eighth-place Ottawa team.

If proverbial lightning was to strike twice, Pittsburgh would make it happen. After dropping Game 1, the Penguins regrouped to issue their first threat.

On Saturday, April 24, 1999, they put four of 21 shots behind Brodeur for a 4-1 victory, knotting the series and usurping the illusion of home-ice advantage. By polishing Pittsburgh’s second strike, Andrusak earned credit for the clincher.

Though he would miss the next night’s tilt due to a bout of food poisoning, the momentum continued. Back home, the Penguins seized the upper hand in the first of the set’s maximum possibility of three lead changes.

When that back-and-forth was over, the underdogs were celebrating again, Game 7 victors at a silenced Continental Airlines Arena.

“It was just sort of a whirlwind tour,” Andrusak reflected. “Going from Gretzky’s last game to (the upset). I look back at it now like it just happened yesterday.”

His illness-induced absence from Game 3 was his only benching that spring. After suiting up for six first-round games, Andrusak added another half-dozen in Pittsburgh’s conference-semifinal loss to Toronto.

But his personal playoff thrill ride was not over. He rejoined the Houston Aeros early in the IHL’s Western Conference final, and dressed for six games en route to the Turner Cup championship.

“I guess that would be the most productive and memorable time of my hockey career,” he offered.

Not that Y2K yielded too much of a letdown. Andrusak credits the Maple Leafs professional scouts who witnessed the Pittsburgh-Toronto series for offering him a contract the next season.

With the Leafs, he mustered nine regular-season and three playoff games, which ultimately finalized his NHL transcript. In between, he played for the IHL’s Chicago Wolves, with whom he won another ring in the spring of 2000.

That split campaign along two of the Great Lakes (Ontario and Michigan) added to a surplus in Andrusak’s log. When he met Turner again, he had no way of knowing his big-league basin had evaporated. But when it came to a career on climate-controlled ponds, he had long bargained with caution.
 

Vocational water cycle

Andrusak was born 350 miles inland from British Columbia’s coast in Cranbrook. That made him a virtual contemporary of future Stanley Cup-winning captains Steve Yzerman (three-and-a-half years his senior) and Scott Niedermayer (four years his junior). Other NHLers from his birthplace of roughly 20,000 included Jon Klemm (773 career games) and Jason Marshall (526).

Another 1970s Cranbrookian child, Corey Spring, mustered 16 twirls in The Show after four years at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Along with Andrusak, he was an exception to the norm of B.C.’s top-tier talent taking the major-junior route.

Through his father’s vocation, Andrusak capitalized on a wealth of opportunities to explore his province’s fisheries. Still, he was raised in what he described as a “middle-income family,” and wanted to “utilize hockey as an opportunity to get an education.”

“That had always been a focus because you never sort of felt like the NHL was achievable,” he elaborated. “Going to university was key.”

After rounding out his youth in B.C.’s Junior A ranks, he accepted coach Mike Sertich’s invitation to UMD. In the neighborhood of Lake Superior, he majored in general biology while bolstering his on-ice prospects.

The Penguins gave him his first boost after his freshman year, choosing him 88th overall in 1988. He later postponed his senior season, spending 1990-91 with Canada’s national team, opposite Stu Barnes, Craig Billington and Joe Juneau.

After he graduated, his studies would not see professional action in earnest for 12 years. Although, as one testament to delayed gratification, the University of Minnesota would become one of Redfish’s affiliates.

Come what may, Andrusak honed a critical chameleon-like habit of adaptability in the interim. During his first stint in Pittsburgh’s pipeline, he played for minor-league teams in Muskegon, Detroit, Cleveland and Minnesota. Over the four nonconsecutive years that he did see action with the Penguins, he never wore the same jersey number twice.

He also formed a juxtaposing pair of memories with the same batterymate. On Oct. 27, 1995, while representing the IHL’s Detroit Vipers, he took a bare-knuckle punch to his visor-shielded face from prolific Indianapolis Ice forward Kip Miller. Moments after the skirmish, Andrusak confronted Miller in the bowels of the arena before being restrained by ushers.

Fast-forward three-and-a-half years, and the two journeymen were sharing a common purpose with the Penguins, with whom Miller had just spent his first NHL-only season.

On April 24, 1999, the depth forward fed Andrusak for the latter’s only NHL goal, regular-season or postseason. The new allies combined for two strikes and six points in Pittsburgh’s seven-game upset of the Devils.

In between, Andrusak played all of 1996-97 and 1997-98 in Berlin, and also spent a portion of 1998-99 in Switzerland. By 2003-04, which he finished as an assistant coach for the Swiss-B league’s EHC Chur after conceding to persistent knee injuries, he had represented 14 cities in four countries over his career.

As fulfilling as it turned out, 1998-99 was arguably his most turbulent campaign. In nine months, he went from Berlin to Geneva to Pittsburgh to Houston.

Back in B.C., where he and his wife settled to raise their four daughters, Andrusak still makes good on his intangible takeaways from that wheel of change.

“Being adapatable and being able to weather the storm, as we call it,” he said, is a key carry-over from his first field to his second.

Working in government, he also recognizes the long-term benefit of his exposure to the Maple Leafs media masses. His final three NHL games closed out Toronto’s second-round loss to the eventual 2000 champion Devils. Not exactly the follow-up the Buds buffs and brass wanted after a journey to the 1999 Eastern Conference final.

The scrutiny and the subsequent summer rebuild that sent him back to free agency gave Andrusak a firsthand feel for the accountability Anglophone Canada’s Original Six franchise upholds. He senses the similarities in how the B.C. press covers his new team’s larger-scale resource-management mission.

In the NHL, it is all about establishing a balance conducive to a winning formula and an entertaining product. In the MFLNRORD, it is all about squaring conservation with the needs, wants and rights of diverse demographics.

Harvey’s precedent sets a sound example. A longtime collaborator with BC Hydro, the province’s premier energy provider, he was also instrumental in establishing the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area.

Since the area took root in 1998, resource exploration and extraction have met various and respected degrees of restrictions and permissions. Four cut-and-dry categories — protected areas, special wildland resource management zones, special resource management zones and enhanced resource management zones — physically divide a land as vast as Ireland. But the boundaries have also kept the peace between all parties concerned.

“In most cases,” the younger Andrusak said, “negotiations are best served when common ground and compromises can be found.”
 

(Photo courtesy of Greg Andrusak)

 



Messaging mogul

Recent initiatives concerning the First Nations tribes and other stakeholders have impelled Andrusak to evolve from more than a master of natural science. He must now also approach his job as an up-and-coming scholar of sociology.

“There’s a lot of outreach to the public, coming from an industry that is so media-driven,” he said. “Being able to communiciate with people is one of the biggest assets we have.”

In terms of social media, Andrusak sticks primarily to a passing game. On Twitter, his hockey content is mostly his 1998-99 Penguins action-shot profile picture and retweets revolving around his daughter, Devan’s, team at the Delta Hockey Academy.

Sometimes his two worlds overlap, as they did this past Thursday when he retweeted a post on current NHLer, fellow conservationist and fellow B.C.-bred fishing enthusiast Andrew Ladd. He has previously retweeted an argumentative salmon-preservation message by Willie Mitchell.

Otherwise, he focuses on sharing articles and retweeting posts on the status of B.C.’s endangered fish stocks. His own commentary, if and when he offers any, is short, crisp and to the point.

One such report, published in the Vancouver Sun on March 8, detailed the dire findings of the Wild Salmon Advisory Council. The group noted that the local salmon and steelhead stocks are vanishing despite a decades-long slew of conservation initiatives.

From his Victoria office, Andrusak is working with regional counterparts to get the species on the emergency list. Meanwhile, as he shared the Sun story, he tweeted, “Still need to address better management of fisheries.”

As it happens, Andrusak’s former line of work has a history of accentuating fish’s importance to his province. From 2004-05 to 2010-11, the Victoria Salmon Kings played in the ECHL.

Neither that team nor the locale was alone. Since 1997, the Idaho Steelheads have competed at the same professional Double-A level the Salmon Kings did. In the Ontario League, Mississauga’s major-junior team has also used the Steelheads moniker since 2012.

Being in Idaho’s bordering province, Andrusak keeps his eye on similar population preservation efforts there. (Idaho Fish & Game was listed among Redfish’s partners and clients during the firm’s Andrusak era.) While he hesitates to draw conclusions on the team nickname’s awareness effect, he welcomes any potential help.

“If we can rise the profile of a species through sport,” he said, “I don’t see that they should be disconnected.”

He should know. His sport bridged him to his studies and beyond.