RD Sergey Zborovskiy - Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg, KHL (2015, 79th, NYR; released)

NHL RankKing

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+51 now through 28 games. He's been a - three games this season, not a single game worse than -1.

I've watched some games and he's a good player, I think one of the best defenseman in the CHL, but I just don't know how to judge being this historically good around halfway through the season with +/-. Usually most people don't think it matters, but when you are on pace to shatter the record, does it prove you are so much better than your competition?

Very good point.
I guess, the question is whether it's anomaly based on how strong his team is, or whether he has true NHL potential (and I don't know the answer). If the team is just that much better with him on the ice he could be the real deal.
It's unfortunate that the CHL doesn't post advanced stats that might be able to give more insight.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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Okay, so an update.

+69 on the season. Leads the WHL in +/- by 19, also leads all of the CHL in +/-. Currently, 3rd best in WHL history since this stat began being recorded about 20 years ago. They have one game left, second place is at +70, so he has a good chance to catch that guy. +75 is the record, so he'd need +6 to tie it. Thats very unlikely, but he did have a +8 game earlier this season. Barring a -2, Zborovskiy will finish the season top 10 in CHL history in +/- for a season.

Getting away from +/-, he tied for the team's defenseman of the season award with Connor Hobbs, a Washington prospect who leads the WHL in defenseman points by 14, so while Zborovskiy's scoring has slowed down the last few months due to a more defensive role, he's still been very good. And really, .61 PPG for a defensive defenseman is pretty good. Its 25th in the WHL for defenseman.

He'll probably start next season in Hartford. I think he's very polished defensively, so he might be more of a one or one and a half year AHL guy than two, but he should make his way to the NHL within the next few years, and should be no worse than a bottom pairing defenseman with realistic middle pairing upside.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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Second team WHL all star.



For his +/- totals, which have already been talked about in this thread, ended +72. Second place to Andrew Ference all-time for a single season in the WHL.
 

Section32

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Second team WHL all star.



For his +/- totals, which have already been talked about in this thread, ended +72. Second place to Andrew Ference all-time for a single season in the WHL.


I know he played heavy minutes with some monster players, but that +/- is still crazy.

I realize the Rangers are happy with the progress of Ryan Graves in the AHL, and expect he will have a shot at the big club in the fall. Does Zborovsky also have a chance at making a huge jump, or does he need more seasoning in the AHL?

Appreciate your opinion.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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I know he played heavy minutes with some monster players, but that +/- is still crazy.

I realize the Rangers are happy with the progress of Ryan Graves in the AHL, and expect he will have a shot at the big club in the fall. Does Zborovsky also have a chance at making a huge jump, or does he need more seasoning in the AHL?

Appreciate your opinion.

I might be in the minority, but I've liked his game a lot this year. There are a lot of fans in the Rangers section who talk a lot about other CHL players like Gropp, Ronning, Morrison, Fontaine because they are labeled "skilled" and Zborovskiy isn't, but as far as I'm concerned, those players are real long-shots to ever make the NHL. Maybe Gropp has a 40/60 chance, the rest I wouldn't even give a 50/50 chance to get a contract from the Rangers. Meanwhile, I would be very surprised if Zborovskiy didn't have an NHL career. I consider him our best current CHL player, and about tied with Day for best CHL prospect. HM for Gettinger who's not bad either.

Zborovskiy plays a type of game that many of the fans on a website like this or twitter won't appreciate until he shows up with 50% or more CF in the NHL. He will get labeled as the type of defenseman that the league is going away from purely because he's a big defensive defenseman. I've seen many stereotypes of this already from Ranger fans. From what I have watched though, he will play in the NHL, and has a good chance to be a middle pairing defenseman. Yeah, he's big and he will make his mark defensively, but once he gets going, he has fairly good skating. He's not some big guy just lumbering around. I was watching him play last weekend, and I saw him take the puck behind the net, elude an onrushing forechecker, and then elude another one who picked up from where the other guy left off. I've seen him carry the puck behind the net in the offensive zone in overtime when there are less players on the ice, something lumbering skaters would not think to do as they'd get caught out of the play defensively. He's not a fancy puck handler, but he's around average, he's not going to be a liability. I've seen him make a number of really nice breakout passes, and he doesn't get pinned in his zone due to an inability to make quick and accurate passes under pressure. He also has a pretty decent shot.

He's kind of like a righty Marc Staal in his defending, but he's a few inches taller than Staal, and more physical. He's nearly impossible to beat 1 on 1 because he has such a long wingspan, he's very athletic and uses his stick well, along with being agile enough. He does an excellent job clearing the crease, and is usually very positionally sound. At the prospects camp, he was the best defenseman, I thought, and that included some defenseman who were a number of years older than him. He was the only player at that camp from the past two drafts who I thought was very good. He was kind of so-so at the World Juniors, those types of tournaments are like all star games though, and whether its the NHL, NBA, the players who are more defensive style players don't usually make their marks as much in those types of games as a full league season with structured play.

When will he play in the NHL? Probably not next year, but I think he's more of a 1 or 1 and half year AHL guy than 2 or 3. I wouldn't doubt that he could keep up in the NHL defensively next season because he is pretty excellent defensively. His WHL coach who coached in the NHL said he was the best pure defensive defenseman in the WHL, and from what I've watched, I agree, but I think he might need some time in the AHL to learn the speed of pro hockey at both ends of the rink.
 
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Pavel Buchnevich

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His regular season +/- was not a fluke.

He's +23 so far in the playoffs. Next best in the WHL Playoffs is +15. It makes absolutely no sense to me how he keeps doing this, but its a good thing.

Also has 8 assists in 17 games.
 

denominator

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Is he playing a top pair and his team scoring in bunches ?

No.

Like, PB posted above, the Rangers fanbase (and greater general hockey fanbase) seems to want to plug Zboro into the "big, mean, slow, WHL defensive defenseman" slot and thus claim he will never succeed at the next level. I've watched a number of those guys move through the WHL in the past couple of seasons (see: Alex Roach, see: Keegan Kanzig, see: Dylan McIlrath) and Zboro is NOT one of those types of players.

He plays at ES on the second defensive pairing (Mahura and Hobbs are the top pairing), and sees very little PP time. He's the Pats #1 PK guy, so while the WHL doesn't track icetime, I would expect he sees comparatively less 5v5 time than other Pats defensemen. Despite this, he's got the best +/- in the playoffs, and is far ahead of his teammates in this category. Say what you will about +/- or team effects, Zboro is finding a way to be on the ice when his team scores and off the ice when his team gets scored on.

I will admit, that there may be a slight points bias in his favour due to WHL line matching. Most WHL teams don't have 2 top lines like Regina does, so Zboro is always playing with either the Steel line or the Brooks line at ES. Further, most WHL teams don't have 2 shutdown pairings so one of the Pats top lines is always going against subpar defense. However, even with that caveat, Zboro isn't picking up so many "free" points on Brooks/Steel's coattails to write him off as a prospect.
 

Michael Farkas

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Ya know, I gotta say, I'm pretty surprised...not that he didn't make the NHL necessary, that's always a tough ask...but in the Rangers system, this guy wasn't good enough to play in the AHL? Really? I get that a Russian doesn't want to go from playing in Regina to play in the cheese toast league for a team called the "Swamp Rabbits" or whatever they're called...now, I didn't see him play this year and I almost never comment on something I didn't see...but I did see him in Regina and I did see him at the 2017 World Juniors and he played a really calm, composed game...he's pretty smart...I wasn't sure if all the technical stuff would get him into the show one day, that's a different story...but he wasn't good enough to play in the AHL?

[RonBurgundyIDontBelieveYou.gif]
 

eco's bones

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Zborovskiy had an okay ECHL season and played 10 AHL games. Skating issues--and more than less a stay at home guy who wasn't much of an offensive threat. His other major problem is he has so many guys ahead of him now. The other thought is he's a big reach for the AHL next year with the Rangers farm team but also it frees him to go and play in Europe.....and maybe he prefers that and asked to be released. The Rangers did the same for Robin Kovacs and Malte Stromwall last year and Kovacs had a pretty decent year in the SHL.

Not a particularly good 3rd rounder for us but whatever.
 

eco's bones

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Ya know, I gotta say, I'm pretty surprised...not that he didn't make the NHL necessary, that's always a tough ask...but in the Rangers system, this guy wasn't good enough to play in the AHL? Really? I get that a Russian doesn't want to go from playing in Regina to play in the cheese toast league for a team called the "Swamp Rabbits" or whatever they're called...now, I didn't see him play this year and I almost never comment on something I didn't see...but I did see him in Regina and I did see him at the 2017 World Juniors and he played a really calm, composed game...he's pretty smart...I wasn't sure if all the technical stuff would get him into the show one day, that's a different story...but he wasn't good enough to play in the AHL?

[RonBurgundyIDontBelieveYou.gif]

FWIW the Wolfpack didn't make the playoffs last year but it was a lot better year than the one before when they finished dead last. In 2017-18 they finished one game over .500. Marked improvement. There were at least 19 defensemen who played for that team last year. That seems like an awful lot to me. Part of it was due to injuries--part of it due to late season call ups after the fire sale. There were the additions of Ryan Lindgren after Minnesota U.'s season ended. The defenseman who played the most games for them was first year pro Brandon Crawley. He was the only guy to play more than 60. Zborovskiy just didn't impress at all.

Rangers ECHL team by the way is going to Maine next season. Rangers have not only Lindgren coming in but Libor Hajek and Sean Day. They're going to have more than enough bodies--better players than Zborovskiy.
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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Ya know, I gotta say, I'm pretty surprised...not that he didn't make the NHL necessary, that's always a tough ask...but in the Rangers system, this guy wasn't good enough to play in the AHL? Really? I get that a Russian doesn't want to go from playing in Regina to play in the cheese toast league for a team called the "Swamp Rabbits" or whatever they're called...now, I didn't see him play this year and I almost never comment on something I didn't see...but I did see him in Regina and I did see him at the 2017 World Juniors and he played a really calm, composed game...he's pretty smart...I wasn't sure if all the technical stuff would get him into the show one day, that's a different story...but he wasn't good enough to play in the AHL?

[RonBurgundyIDontBelieveYou.gif]

No, it seems pretty clear that he was good enough to get his shot in the AHL, but management didn't seem to like him because of his style of play and we have a lot of D prospects in the minors, so I guess that was what made the decision for them.

I think in 2-3 years an NHL team might try to bring him back over. He's not a bad hockey player and might've even been better than some of the guys that they prefer, but there just wasn't a fit with what our organization wants out of defensemen since Gorton took over. Why ride buses for a low salary when you can get paid a higher salary in the KHL?
 
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GeorgeKaplan

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No, it seems pretty clear that he was good enough to get his shot in the AHL, but management didn't seem to like him because of his style of play and we have a lot of D prospects in the minors, so I guess that was what made the decision for them.

I think in 2-3 years an NHL team might try to bring him back over. He's not a bad hockey player and might've even been better than some of the guys that they prefer, but there just wasn't a fit with what our organization wants out of defensemen since Gorton took over. Why ride buses for a low salary when you can get paid a higher salary in the KHL?
There’s literately no evidence of this
 

Pavel Buchnevich

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There’s literately no evidence of this

There's literally a lot of evidence of this. He was drafted in June of 2015, Gorton took over the organization in July of 2015. Ever since Gorton took over, positional defenders who play a defensive style have been pushed out of the organization or been treated very differently than other styles of defensemen. We know all about what Gorton wants.

He bought out one of the organizations best ever defensemen because he didn't play the right style and used that free cap space to sign Brendan Smith to a big contract who has shown no evidence of being better than a marginal hockey player. But the corsi stats are good and he sucks at putting up points, so they call that a defensive defenseman. Sent him to the AHL a number of months later for failing to play like an NHL player. The player he bought out played better this season than almost his whole defense.

And then we see in some of the recent trades. Cal Foote was pretty unanimously regarded as Tampa's best defensive prospect by most of the scouting industry, but we've been told for months the Rangers didn't care and instead wanted Hajek. Why? I suspect it comes down to Foote's somewhat iffy skating. Thats not really part of Hajek's scouting report. They had all these spots available for defensemen late in the season, but gave no chance to Graves, instead trading him away for a player they kept in the minors. Gilmour, Sproul, DeAngelo, Pionk, O'Gara all played, some of them very badly. The guy who was good for two years in the AHL and showed decent upside was traded because he wasn't the most agile in his pivots.

They signed Bereglazov who was a pretty good defensive defensemen the year prior in the second best league in the world. They gave him no chance. Actually, they gave him less of a shot than some guys who played in the minors all season. He didn't even get two preseason games, which almost all the minor league players got. The shills have told us he just wasn't suited for the new NHL, even though they've likely never seen him play, and we just went through the team's worst defensive season of the current era. The Rangers with their preferences on defense are all about skating and puck moving. They'll fill in the needed info from there. If you don't have skill, they'll call you a defensive defenseman. If you do, you are an offensive defenseman. This organization has totally went radical when it comes to how they regard defenseman, and its showing in the results.

But I get it, a lot of you refuse to criticize Gorton, at all. He's the messiah, even though our defense still sucks, and he's made a lot of questionable decisions, especially on the back-end.
 
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