Zubov an Underrated Ranger

In a special guest post at the Rangers Report, Walt MacPeek blogs about the most under-rated and under-appreciated player in the history of the Rangers franchise: Sergie Zubov.

MacPeek goes on to say that Neil Smith's trade of Zubov to the Pittsburgh Penguins for Luc Robitaille and defenseman Ulf Samuelsson was one of the most damaging transactions in Ranger history...

"For some reason, Ranger fans and officials refuse to rank the Zubov blunder up there with Rick Middleton for Ken Hodge or drafting Hugh Jessiman instead of Zach Parise but, in my opinion, it had a similarly disastrous and long-term impact on the team over a long period of time. Until recently, the Rangers compounded this error by making repeated draft day mistakes on defensemen and finally hit rock bottom in 2003-2004 when they drafted only one defenseman (Purinton, and he was awful!) who played as many as 40 games … and he was a low minutes, No. 3 pairing kind of player."

...until the arrival of Del Zotto this season, the Rangers have been searching for a replacement for Leetch since he was traded in 2004. Unfortunately for the Blueshirts, they had that player but traded him away nine years earlier.