Last season, almost all of Avsopolis (it's like Avs-nation, without the cliche "nation") pretty much hated Darcy Tucker. He was down-right atrocious last season, was overpaid, and replaced fan favorite Andrew Brunette (and his contract was a factor in not re-signing  fan favorite Ian Laperriere). All-in-all it looked like Darcy Tucker was a shoe-in to replace Tyler Arnason as the Avs most-hated player by his own fan base. Then a funny thing happened to start the season:

Tucker played well. Like really well. He even looked like he might justify that contract he's playing with. Avs fans started to even like well tolerate Tucker on the roster. He also earned bonus points from Avs fans for becoming Landlord of almost instantaneously and universally loved Ryan O'Reilly.  So us fans, especially the ones who hated Tucker last year, were feeling well, a little confused on the inside. So we stopped calling him "Sham-wow", and just settled in and thought he'd be a serviceable 3rd line winger. Well here's the situation Avsopolis (yeah, it's growing on me):

It's okay to start openly despising Darcy Tucker (as a hockey player) again

(More after the jump)

In fact I think the reason it took this long to jump back on the Tucker -wagon is because I, and others, felt pretty sorry for him after Tuomo Ruutu gashed his face open. Here he was having a pretty decent season and it goes and gets ruined by a bad hit along the boards, and we were all enjoying the Tucker-resurgence. The sympathy from that injury, and the fact that the Avs are actually winning, kind of kept the spotlight off of his performance.

Well, guess what folks: he's been atrocious especially on offense. Since Dec 1 he's got 9 shots. That's cumulative. Here's a list of Avs forwartds that have 9 shots or less in that time:

Darcy Tucker - 9
Brandon Yip - 9
Matt Hendricks - 8
Marek Svatos - 7
Chris Durno - 6
David Koci - 1

Only Hendricks and Tucker on that list has played in a full slate of games. (Hendricks has 1:11 of his 8:24/game on the powerplay. Tucker has 1:43 SH all-season, while Tucker gets 2:30+ on the Power play, and Hendricks gets next-to-nothing.)

If you're still unconvinced about Tucker's atrociousness here: You can look at his stats over on Behind the Net's site. His GFon/60 is worse than everyone but Tom Preissing, Ruslan Salei, Justin Mercier and Ryan Stoa. He's 3rd on the team in GFOff/60, which sounds impressive until you realize that this is a measure of how well the Avs score goals when he isn't on the ice.

Despite this scoring inadequacy Tucker is a mind-boggling 5th for forwards in PP ice time per game, at 2:32. Meanwhile Chris Stewart, who's got the best GFon/60 on the team, languishes at 7th for forwards.

There's minor one defense of Tucker it's that hes been playing with substandard linemates. Behind the net has his linemates quality is -.245, which is worst on the team (of course his quality of competition has been -.119). One bright spot for Tucker is that he hasn't been a complete defensive liability, as his GAon/60 is among the tops on the team at 1.66. Of course this comes with the fact he doesn't play on the PK, so probably take it can be taken with a grain of salt.

So I encourage the Avalanche Faithful to dust-off the Sham-Wow pics, and start recycling the old Arnason jokes, because the Darcy Tucker we all learned to bang-our-heads against the wall last season is back.. and has been for some time.

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