Friday, Nov. 5, 2004 | 10:46 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
One of the best players to lace up the skates in Las Vegas' short professional hockey history is dead, the victim of an apparent heart attack at age 31.
But in the figurative sense, it was his heart -- and soul -- combined with a deft shooting touch that made Sergei Zholtok one of the most popular players in the six-year history of the Las Vegas Thunder.
Zholtok died Wednesday night while playing for his hometown team, Riga of Latvia, while trying to stay in shape during the NHL lockout. With five minutes remaining in a game against Dinamo Minsk in Belarus, Zholtok skated off the ice and went to the locker room, where he collapsed.
Attempts to revive Zholtok, who had a history of arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), were unsuccessful. And just like that, even quicker than one one of his wrist shots, Zholtok was gone.
"I'll tell ya, this is a big loss all the way around," said Bob Strumm, who as Thunder general manager was the man responsible for bringing Zholtok to Las Vegas and resuscitating his NHL career.
Zholtok, one of only a handful of Latvians to play in the NHL (his hometown of Riga also produced former UNLV basktball star Kaspars Kambala), broke in with Boston during the 1993-94 season but was struggling to make his way back to the NHL with Providence, the Bruins' top farm club, when Strumm started scouting the American Hockey League via satellite dish. He signed Zholtok to a Las Vegas contract for the 1995-96 season.
"I remember calling him in for a talk in December. He had been struggling a little bit and I told him that if he wanted to get back to the (NHL), he was going to have to score 50 goals," Strumm said. "Well, he got 51, and that put him back in the league."
Zholtok, who added 50 assists in 82 games that year, was one of only two 50-goal scorers in Thunder history joining Ken Quinney, who set the franchise record of 55 goals during the franchise's International Hockey League debut in 1993-94. Zholtok also spent part of the 1996-97 season in Las Vegas before being recalled by Ottawa and making a permanent home in the NHL.
Strumm, now director of pro scouting for the NHL's Columbus Blue Jackets, was on assignment in Edmonton when he learned of Zholtok's death from Rich Campbell, the former Thunder trainer now with the New York Islanders.
"He was a solid guy, a family guy and a good friend," Strumm said of Zholtok, who scored 111 goals and had 147 assists in 588 NHL games for Boston, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, Minnesota and Nashville. His best season was 1999-2000, when he had 26 goals for the Canadiens.
But it was Zholtok's big year in Las Vegas that made it all possible.
"The secret with the Russian guys was earning their trust," said Strumm, whose penchant for signing eastern Europeans helped the Thunder become an IHL powerhouse even though it never won a Turner Cup championship. "I think we were able to do that with Sergei."
Jeff Sharples, a three-time IHL all-star defenseman, indirectly owes his Turner Cup ring to Zholtok. Hoping to jump start Zholtok on offense midway through the 1995-96 season, Las Vegas traded Sharples and Marc Rodgers, another original Thunder, to Utah for Zholtok's buddy and countryman Grigori Panteleyev.
But Sharples said you didn't have to wear the same color sweater as Zholtok to appreciate his skill as a hockey player.
"I played with him when he got (51) that year and he was electric," said Sharples, now a commercial jet pilot and a part-time coach with the Las Vegas Wranglers. "He was more of a defensive forward in the NHL. Good hands, good vision, good shot and good hockey sense.
"He was a good teammate. He had a wife and a little boy at the time and he was a quiet guy, although he could be outgoing."
Zholtok and his wife, Anna, had another son since leaving Las Vegas.
"Obviously, it's a tragedy, especially leaving behind those two young boys without a father figure," Sharples said.
"He was an excellent hockey player and a good man. It's just a shame."
Zholtok spoke fluent English, which helped him get along with his Thunder teammates and assimilate to life in America, recalled Tim Neverett, the team's play-by-play announcer.
"The guys liked him, and the reason they liked him is he could communicate so well," said Neverett, who now hosts a sports talk show for ESPN Radio in Denver. "He even had the slang down.
"He taught me how to say 'hello,' and some other Russian phrases. When I saw him last year when he was with the Predators I said dobrey den and he remembered and started laughing."
Neverett said he and Zholtok chatted about the old times before and after their interview during last year's NHL playoffs. Given the lockout, that might have been the last interview request Zholtok ever granted.
"It's such a big loss," Neverett said. "A lot of American fans probably never got to know him, so people don't know what a great sense of humor he had. He was very funny, and a lot of the guys from Western Canada gravitated toward him. He was just one of the boys."
Strumm, who was born and raised in Saskatchewan on the Canadian prairie, said if Zholtok only used "eh?" a little more often to punctuate his thoughts, you might have sworn that he, too, had grown up amid Saskatoon's many bridges, wide streets and green parks.
"He could have been from Western Canada, and that's the biggest compliment I can pay him," Strumm said with a heartfelt chuckle.
"If ever I had a Russian son, he was it."
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