HC Lugano of the Swiss National League announced today that they’ve signed former NHL winger Zach Sanford to a one-year deal.
Sanford, 31 in November, was a second-round pick by the Capitals back in 2013. He started his career with the Caps in 2016 but played only briefly for Washington, splitting the first part of the season between the NHL and AHL rosters before he was traded to the Blues in the Kevin Shattenkirk headliner at the 2017 deadline.
He remained in the minors for an injury-plagued 2017-18 campaign but got much more of a crack at NHL minutes the following year. Sanford was among the Blues’ better fourth-line options in the regular season, totaling 20 points in 60 games, and appeared in eight playoff games as the franchise marched to its first Stanley Cup win.
The post-Cup bump was real and immediate. While he began 2019-20 on the fringes of the St. Louis lineup, he worked his way into regular top-nine minutes by the time November rolled around and carried some shooting luck to a career year. He clicked at a 17.8% rate in 58 appearances before COVID ended the season in March, scoring 16 goals and 30 points to finish seventh on the team in scoring while also finishing fourth with 109 hits.
That quality production helped the Blues along to their first division title in five years and got him penciled into the opening-night lineup when play resumed the following season in January 2021. Unfortunately, that breakout wasn’t sustainable. Despite still shooting at an above-average 14.9% rate, Sanford only managed 16 points in 52 games in his follow-up year despite averaging 14:53 of ice time per game, more than a full minute over his 2019-20 deployment.
Sanford was an RFA the following offseason and signed a one-year, $2MM deal to remain with the Blues, but he never played another game for St. Louis. They traded him to the Senators before the 2021-22 season began and had similar offensive struggles in extended minutes before getting flipped to the Jets at the trade deadline. Despite the move, he did play a career-high 80 games that year, recording a 9-12–21 scoring line with a career-high 169 hits.
The 6’4″, 206-lb winger has only logged 45 NHL appearances since then, though, and saw no usage last season. After seeing some action for the Predators, Coyotes, and Blackhawks in the past few years, he spent last year with Chicago on a two-way deal and recorded 19 goals and 43 points in 70 games for AHL Rockford.
Now headed to Switzerland, he should help replace some of the offensive production Lugano lost when high-end minor-league scorer Daniel Carr departed the club earlier this summer to make a return to North America. He brings Lugano’s roster’s tally of NHL experience to over 1,500 games, joining names like Connor Carrick, Rasmus Kupari, and Brendan Perlini, among a few others. If he lights up the Swiss circuit this year, a return to the NHL wouldn’t be out of the question for 2026-27.