Former NHLer Sergei Zubov hired by Blues as advisor to hockey operations

The St. Louis Blues are bringing a Hall of Famer into their front office.

On Friday, the Blues announced that they are hiring former NHL defenseman Sergei Zubov as an advisor to hockey operations.

Zubov, 56, previously worked with St. Louis as a team consultant in the 2012-13 season. His other NHL front office experience came in the 2019-20 season, when he served as a senior advisor for the Dallas Stars.

Outside of his brief stints working in the NHL, Zubov has spent most of his post-playing days as a coach in the KHL. Last season, he was an assistant coach for the KHL’s Traktor Chelyabinsk.

Zubov has been a head coach in the KHL for three different franchises. He took over as the head coach of SKA St. Petersburg for part of the 2015-16 season, after the departure of previous head coach Andrei Nazarov. He was then hired as the bench boss for HK Sochi for the 2017-18 season, where he would remain until he was fired in October of 2019. He was briefly the head coach for Dinamo Riga at the start of the 2021-22 season, but resigned in October of 2021. Zubov returned to HK Sochi as their head coach in 2024-25, but was dismissed following the season.

As a player, Zubov has a successful 16-year career split between the New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Stars. After getting drafted by New York in the fifth round of the 1990 NHL Entry Draft, he broke out as a high-end defenseman in his second NHL season of 1993-94, when he had 89 points in 78 games, followed by 19 points in 22 playoff games en route to the Rangers winning the Stanley Cup.

After a one-year stay with the Penguins in 1995-96, Zubov spent the rest of his career in Dallas, winning his second Stanley Cup in 1999.

He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2019.