Zubov was what made those Stars team function and be a perenial contender for a decade and when he had to retire the team completely fell to ****. Yeah he didn't get too much personal hardware and accolades but he was an elite player offensively and defensively. Heiskanen is a very good prospect but lets not get carried away just yet.
This is a bad take.
Zubov was a part of it.
But the thing that made the late 90's mid 00's Stars so great is they had a roster full of talent and could quite literally play any style of game on any given night. There was so much talent on that team that anyone (including Zubov) could go down and the team had enough talent to compensate.
The team Fell off because of bankruptcy and Injury.
the 08-09 season Only Ribeiro, Niskanen, Modano Eriksson stayed healthy then it was into the throws of bankruptcy and mismanagement that we're still suffering from.
it wasn't Zubov leaving.
Morrow missing 90% of the season,
Richards roughly half the season,
had a bigger impact on the 08-09 cluster-f*** than Zubov.
As well as the old guard being just that and missing half/most of the season (Boucher, Lehtinen, Modano,etc)