But was he a playoff warrior? No, but I wouldn't call him a poor playoff performer either. He doesn't have those peak years in the playoffs like a guy such as Kurri or even Brett Hull would have had. Or Anderson even. And it isn't as if he got those 73 goals in 250 playoff games, he did it in 140. Not bad. His teams just didn't normally go very far when he was in a position to be the big difference maker.
dino wasn't a consistent playoff producer but he had some high highs. as a rookie, he helped minnesota to the finals and still holds the rookie playoff goals and points records, with 14 and 21, respectively. i think the points record stood unopposed for 35 years, until guentzel tied it.
my clearest dino in the playoffs memory is 1990 in washington. that great defensive washington team built around langway couldn't get out of the patrick division for the entire 80s. even with langway, stevens, great defensive forwards like bengt-ake gustafsson, gaetan duchesne, bobby gould, older jarvis, later kelly miller and dale hunter, plus good two way guys like dave christian, mike ridley, craig laughlin, those deep teams never won. and it's not like they were losing to the islanders and flyers every year. they lost division finals to the rangers and the upstart '88 devils. and the narrative is they could defend but they couldn't score, and the blame fell on their offence built around gartner, bobby carpenter, and larry murphy. look at the 1985 team that finished third in the league, career 50 goal years by gartner and carpenter, langway in his top five in hart voting peak, doug jarvis second in selke voting, stevens and murphy in their primes — their first round against the aging islanders with trottier hobbled was five one goal games (not counting an EN in game four) and they lost four of them. they were even better in '86 (50 wins, 107 points) but lost three one goal games to the rangers, including two in OT. and '88, which really should have been their year, with the addition of finally a star goalie in pete peeters (who led the RS in GAA and the playoffs in SV%), they were upset by the devils. game seven came down to one goal in the third period, and washington wasn't the team that scored it.
the offseason after those playoffs, gartner and murphy got traded for ciccarelli and rouse. the other guy they added was geoff courtnall from edmonton. they lost again in '89, but then in 1990, ciccarelli goes wild in the first round. 8 goals, 11 points in six games. hat trick (and an assist) in game one, including the 5-4 OT winner. courtnall with two game winners and the immortal john druce picking up the other one. then when dino got hurt in round two, john druce made himself a legend (9 goals, 11 points in five games). the last two games of the series both went to OT and washington won them both, including druce's OT winner to take the series. courtnall had nine points, and assisted on both of druce's game winners, with druce assisting on courtnall's GWG. then they got swept by the bruins, but that was the first time washington made it to the wales finals. these were supposed to be the new clutch capitals, with stevens taking over for langway, hatcher stepping into stevens' role, hunter, miller, and ridley establishing themselves as the new two-way core up front, with ciccarelli and courtnall scoring clutch goals.
then obviously something very very bad happened and that team was blown up.
but by the time detroit went to the finals in 1995, there was still the idea that ciccarelli was the guy you'd count on to score when you needed one, because at that time, yzerman was considered a choker and nobody trusted the europeans yet. for his part, ciccarelli co-led detroit in goals, with nine, which also was third in the playoffs, behind conn smythe claude lemieux and art ross jagr.
