Vasily Podkolzin

Last Season

Nineteen goals and 37 points in all 82 games, plus-16, with 63 penalty minutes — comfortably the best season of his career and the first one that looked like the player Vancouver thought it was drafting.

The Finesse Game

The hands are honest middle-six hands. He is not going to beat a defenseman one-on-one in open ice, and the shot is good rather than dangerous — most of his goals come from within fifteen feet, off rebounds, deflections and loose pucks he has personally created.

What he does well is arrive. He plays a straight-line game up the wall, gets the puck deep, and is on the defenseman before the retrieval is finished. Playing with skilled centers, that is worth more than a soft pair of hands, because the pucks he wins back go directly to people who know what to do with them.

The skating is heavy-legged and quick enough. He is not a burner but nothing about his game requires him to be.

The Physical Game

This is the reason he plays. He finishes every check available to him, he is genuinely strong along the wall for a man of ordinary size, and he plays with an edge that gets under people without costing his team much — 63 penalty minutes is a lot for a middle-six winger and almost none of it was stupid.

The Intangibles

The story on him coming out of Russia was of a hard-nosed power winger with unfinished skill, and the disappointment in Vancouver was a confidence problem as much as anything. In Edmonton he was given a simple job and has done it without complication, which is often what a stalled career actually needs.

He is unlikely to score much more than he did last year. He also does not need to.