Springfield, Massachusetts. …The American Hockey League announced today Andrew Poturalski San Jose Barracuda was named champion Les Cunningham Award As the most valuable player in the AHL season 2024-25.
The award is voted by coaches, players and media members representing each of the league’s 32 cities.
This is Poturalski’s first MVP award, with its AHL career honors including three scoring champions and two Calder Cup champions. Despite missing the final three weeks of the 2024-25 regular season, Poturalski led the league with 73 points in 59 games, leading the Barracudas in their best record and first Calder Cup playoff game since 2019. He ranked second in the AHL, second in the AHL, 13th powerball only in teammate Danil Gushchin, and gained a 24.0.0.0.0% advantage of San Jose with 13 strong efficiency. San Jose’s Poturalski in the roster was 31-19-5-4 (.602), while not his 5-8-0-0-0 (.385), and when registering at least one point in the game, in the game and 24-10-4-3 (.671).
Poturalski is a Williamsville, NY native who was selected as the AHL All-Star in 2024-25 for his fourth professional playoff AHL All-Star Game. In the 527 professional AHL regular season with San Jose, Coachella Valley, Chicago, San Diego and Charlotte, he aggregated 161 goals and 332 assists in 81 playoff games with 493 points, and he added 26 goals and 47 assists in 81 playoff games. Poturalski also recorded three assists in nine professional games in the NHL, including one in three games with the San Jose Sharks this season.
The AHL Most Valuable Player Award is awarded to the Deceased Les Cunninghama member of the AHL Hall of Fame, was a five-time All-Star and three-time Calder Cup winner for the Barons of Cleveland. Previous winners of the award include Carl Liscombe (1948, ’49), Johnny Bower (1956, ’57, ’58), Fred Glover (1960, ’62, ’64), Art Straton (1965, ’74), Dick Gambling (1996), Mike Nykoluk (1967), Dave Creighton (1968), Gilles Villemure (1969, ’70), Doug Gibson (1975, ’77), Pelle Lindbergh (1981), Paul Gardner (1985, ’86), Tim Tookey (1987), Jody Gage (1988), John Anderson (1992), Don Biggs (1993), Brad Smyth (1996), Derek Armstrong (2001), Jason Spezza (2005), Keith Aucoin (2010), Taylor Johnson (2013), Travis Morin (2014), Chris Bourque (2016), Gerry Mayhew (2020), TJ Tynan (2021, ’22), Dustin Wolf (2023) and Mavrik Bourque (2024).
Since 1936, the American Hockey League has continued to be the top development league for all 32 national hockey league teams. Nearly 90% of players in NHL games are AHL graduates, and the American Hockey League has been more than 100 members of the Hockey Hall of Fame for years.
