EDMONTON — How on earth does a team like the Edmonton Oilers, in the middle of their Stanley Cup window, end up with an emerging, 25-year-old power forward like Vasily Podkolzin?
From a Vancouver team that could dearly use such a player? For just the miserly price of a fourth-round draft pick, no less?
Well, it all started with a phone call from former Chicago Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman, to his former head coach in Chicago, Jeremy Colliton, who just happened to be Podkolzin’s head coach in AHL Abbotsford.
“I was already leaving to go to New Jersey at the time he called me, and I think Stan had recently taken the job in Edmonton. (Podkolzin) was available, I guess is the best way to put it,” began Colliton, over the phone from New Jersey.
“I felt like he could be a top-nine guy on a top team, just because of the package that he offers. I could see him playing the playoffs. Probably a complementary player in the top nine. Obviously, he's in a pretty good complementary spot right now.”
Colliton had Podkolzin in Abbotsford for 72 games over two seasons (2022-24). He quite liked the player, but it is clear now that Colliton’s bosses in Vancouver didn’t really know what they had.
Consider this anecdote from Bruce Boudreau, the Canucks head coach for parts of Podkolzin’s first two seasons there:
“I remember our first meeting with (Canucks president) Jim Rutherford and the GM (Patrik Alvin),” Boudreau recently told Edmonton Sports Talk. “I said, ‘I think (Nils) Höglander and Podkolzin should go to Abbotsford to get their game going a little bit. We’re asking them for big minutes here, and they’re really young guys coming from a different situation.’
“And they looked at me like I had two heads. So that went about as far as anything else I said in Vancouver.”
Today, Podkolzin roams the left side of one of hockey’s most dangerous lines, with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. He has seven goals and 12 points in nine games, but his path to production isn’t the one anyone thought he would travel when he was drafted 10th overall in 2019.
“I was the 10th pick. So, yeah, expectations are high,” Podkolzin said this week. “You grow up pretty fast here in this league, and then you figure out what role you have. I'm happy with mine.”
His role evolved from franchise saviour in Vancouver to a steady, sturdy forechecker in Edmonton with offensive potential.
How much potential? Who really knows?
“I remember having a meeting with him,” recalled Colliton. He told Podkolzin, “I see your game transferring. I see you playing on a playoff team and being a heart-and-soul guy. That is incredibly valuable, and you’ve got to get your head around that being really good — whether you score 40 goals or not.
“Like, there are only so many of those guys around,” Colliton told him. “I'm saying to him, ‘I'm not going to put a ceiling on you — ever — but you’ve got to value that role.'”
Like so many high picks, Podkolzin had to accept that there was another route to a steady NHL job other than leading his team in scoring the way he had growing up.
“Back in those days, I’m still trying to figure it out, what kind of role I'm going to get in this (Vancouver) organization,” Podkolzin said. “(Colliton) was a guy who pushed me and believed in me, no matter what. He actually thought much more about my potential. We had so many meetings. We (would) talk a few times a week in his office.
“One day he told me, ‘I think you can be the game-changer. The guy who will be super useful for playoffs.’ He was a great coach for me. I got lucky.”
Today, Zach Hyman sees himself in the young Muscovite.
“The foundation of his game is his work ethic, his tenacity and his ability to be hard on pucks,” Hyman said. “You can do that as a bottom-six guy, and you can do that as a top-six guy. It's allowed him to have a lot of time in the league to learn how to score and to figure it out.”
Like so many before him, Podkolzin just had to accept that he might not be the guy everyone thought he would be.
“Not accepting. It's confidence,” Hyman corrected. “Podz was a 10th-overall pick. So he's been a scorer growing up. Then you get to the league, and it's building the confidence that, ‘Hey, I can score in this league. And I can score over and over again.’
“You don’t go from zero to 50. I went from 10 to 15, to 20, to 30 (to 54). He'll be a guy who does that. There's no reason he can't do that.”
No reason at all, if you’re patient enough.
