Vladimir Konstantinov is a Russian former defenceman who played his entire NHL career with the Detroit Red Wings, from 1991 to 1997. Konstantinov anchored the Russian Five, led the NHL in plus-minus in 1995-96 and won the Stanley Cup with Detroit in 1997. Konstantinov played 446 regular-season NHL games, and a limousine crash on 13 June 1997 ended Konstantinov's playing career six days after that championship.
| Position | Defence, shot right |
|---|---|
| Born | 19 March 1967 in Murmansk, Soviet Union |
| Drafted | Detroit Red Wings, eleventh round, 221st overall, 1989 |
| Teams | CSKA Moscow in the Soviet league, Detroit Red Wings 1991 to 1997 |
| NHL totals | 446 games, 47 goals, 128 assists, 175 points, 838 penalty minutes, plus 185 |
| Honours | Stanley Cup 1997, NHL Plus/Minus Award 1996, NHL Second All-Star Team 1996, NHL All-Rookie Team 1992 |
| Known for | The Russian Five, a league-leading plus 60 in 1995-96, and the No. 16 Detroit has never reissued |
Six days after Detroit won the 1997 Stanley Cup, Konstantinov, teammate Slava Fetisov and team masseur Sergei Mnatsakanov hired a limousine to take them home from a team outing. On 13 June 1997 the limousine left Woodward Avenue in Birmingham, Michigan, and struck a tree in the median. Konstantinov and Mnatsakanov were both seriously injured. Fetisov escaped with minor injuries. Konstantinov never played another NHL game, and a career that had just produced a championship and a Norris Trophy runner-up finish ended at 446 regular-season games.
Detroit drafted Konstantinov 221st overall in the eleventh round of the 1989 NHL Entry Draft, after a club scout had watched Konstantinov at the 1987 World Junior Championship. Getting Konstantinov to Michigan then took more than two years, because Konstantinov had signed a 25-year commitment to CSKA Moscow, a club run as a department of the Soviet army. The release came in the summer of 1991 through a medical discharge from the military, granted on paperwork later reported to have been arranged rather than genuine. Detroit's scouting behind the Iron Curtain in those years also produced a serious attempt to draft Pavel Bure.
The Russian Five was the all-Soviet unit Scotty Bowman used in Detroit in the mid 1990s: Konstantinov and Slava Fetisov on defence, with Igor Larionov, Sergei Fedorov and Slava Kozlov in front of them. All five had been raised in a system built on possession and circling support, the same school that produced the Soviet Green Unit, and Bowman let them play it in the NHL. Konstantinov supplied the hard edge. The unit became the signature of those Red Wings teams and was central to the 1997 championship.
Konstantinov's best statistical season was 1995-96, when Konstantinov finished at plus 60, the highest figure in the league that year, and won the NHL Plus/Minus Award. Konstantinov added 14 goals and 20 assists and was named to the NHL Second All-Star Team. The following season Konstantinov finished runner-up for the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the league's best defenceman, behind Brian Leetch of the New York Rangers. Across 446 NHL games Konstantinov recorded 47 goals, 128 assists, 175 points, 838 penalty minutes and a plus 185 rating, and found time to send Claude Lemieux into orbit.
Not formally. Detroit has never held a ceremony for the number, and 16 does not hang in the rafters alongside the numbers the club has retired, among them Sergei Fedorov's No. 91. What the Red Wings have done is decline to issue 16 to another player at any point since Konstantinov's last game in 1997, which is why the number is often described as retired in all but name. Konstantinov wore 16 for all six of those NHL seasons, and nobody in Detroit has worn it since.
Konstantinov's one Stanley Cup as a player came in 1997, when Detroit swept the Philadelphia Flyers in the Final and ended a championship drought that reached back to 1955. When the Red Wings defended the title in 1998, the club brought the Cup to Konstantinov on the ice, and captain Steve Yzerman, having lifted it himself, broke with tradition by making Konstantinov the first man he handed it to. That moment is among the most replayed in Red Wings history, and it is the reason Konstantinov's name is attached to both of those championship teams.
