Former New York Rangers defenseman Sergei Zubov has been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. This is a long overdue honor to one of the best blueliners of his generation.
Sergei Zubov has deserved to be in the Hall of Fame for a number of years. For the New York Rangers, he was a high scoring defenseman who had a long career after the team made the mistake of trading him.
Zubov was elected with five others at the annual meeting of the Selection Committee in Toronto. He will be joined by Jim Rutherford and Jerry York in the Builder category and Guy Carbonneau, Hayley Wickenheiser and Vaclav Nedomansky in the Player category. Nedomansky is also an ex-Ranger as he finished his career with the Blueshirts in 1983.
Long overdue
Sergei Zubov has had his supporters who have pushed his entry into the Hall of Fame. One year ago, John Williams of Blue Line Station made a eloquent argument for that. Looking at Zubov’s career statistics, it was absurd that he had not been elected.
He is one of the greatest Russian players to play in the NHL. He has the highest points per game average of any Russian defenseman (.722) He is the second highest scoring Russian defenseman of all time with 771 points. Only Sergei Gonchar score more (811), but he took 333 more games to do it. He has scored the 12th most points of any Russian players in NHL history.
But it’s not his feats as a Russian player that warrant Hall of Fame status. His career totals are outstanding. He finished with 152 goals and 619 assists for 771 points in 1,068 games. Only 18 other defensemen in NHL history have more points than Zubov and they are all Hall of Famers. He is 16th on the all-time assists list and 23rd on the power play goals list with 81. His .58 assists per game rate is 12th all-time.
It’s no wonder that Zubov had a small but vocal group of fans advocating for him. He was one of the best of all time.
His Ranger career
Zubov was drafted in the fifth round of the 1990 Entry Draft. After three years with CSKA Mosow, he came over to play for the Rangers in the 1992-83 season at the age of 22. He showed his offensive prowess with 31 points in 49 games.
It was in the Stanley Cup season of 1993-94 that Zubov became a star. He actually led that team in points. No, it wasn’t Messier or Leetch, it was Sergei Zubov with 89 points. He followed that with 19 points in 22 playoff games. While he was overshadowed by Brian Leetch, Zubov was the first Russian player to get his name on the Stanley Cup along with Sergei Nemchinov, Alex Kovalev and Alexander Karpovtsev.
In the strike shortened 1994-95 season he continued with his point-a-game scoring and had 11 points in 10 playoff games. It was in those playoffs that his fate was sealed. The Rangers were manhandled by Eric Lindros and the Philadelphia Flyers, losing in four straight games. Rangers management felt that they need to get bigger on the blueline and that meant the end of Zubov’s Ranger career. Along with Petr Nedved (who was run out of town by Mark Messier), Zubov was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Ulf Samuelsson and Luc Robitaille.
While Samuelsson provided the size and strength the Rangers wanted, in the four years he played in New York, the Blueshirts never got past the Conference Finals
A home in Dallas
After one season in Pittsburgh, the Penguins traded him to Dallas where he played for 12 more years, winning another Stanley Cup in 1999. He was a reliable and productive defenseman for the Stars and played until he was 38. He never reached the heights that he had achieved in 1993-94, but was one of the better NHL defensemen for years.
Since retirement, Zubov returned to Russia and he is now coach of Sochi in the KHL where Ranger prospect Yegor Rykov played last season. Zubov made an emotional return to Madison Square Garden this season when the 1994 Cup winners were saluted on the 25 anniversary of winning.
The 2019 Induction ceremony will be held on Monday, November 18th at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.