Vasily Podkolzin

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

4 goals and 3 assists in 39 games — 7 points — at 11:50 a night. Minus-5, 41 shots at 9.8 per cent, 9 penalty minutes.

Seven points in his second season, after 26 in his first.

45.6 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five across 442 minutes, the 19th percentile, with his ice at 13-17 against an expectation of 15.51-18.50.

He started 58.1 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 85th percentile: 144 attacking draws against 104 defensive ones. Sheltered, on the fourth line, and still a 19th-percentile chance share — which is the row that explains the thirty-nine games.

The Finesse Game

41 shots at a median of 23 feet, with 44 per cent of his attempts from inside twenty.

Inside twenty feet: 16 shots on goal and no goals. From twenty to forty: 14 shots and four goals. Beyond forty: 10 shots and none. Forty shots on goal is not a sample and every one of those rates is noise.

63 tracked attempts across 39 games, 34 of them wrist shots and 13 backhands — a 20.6 per cent share — and one slap shot. 86.0 mph at the 16th percentile, which is soft.

18 goals in 118 career games at 11.5 per cent. The first season was the better one and nothing since has matched it.

What came with the draft position was a heavy, direct winger who would score from the net-front. He still goes there. The puck is not going in when he does.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 190 pounds, with 9 penalty minutes in 39 games and 35 in 118 career games.

Top speed 22.0 mph at the 36th percentile, 1.7 bursts above twenty a game at the 78th, and 1.91 miles a game at the 12th — which is twelve minutes of ice time.

Ordinary top-end speed reached often, which is the tracking line of a forechecker rather than a scorer.

He forechecks hard and hits, and that part of the file has never been in doubt. The willingness is what got him into the league at twenty and it is what will keep him on the roster fringe.

He is 190 pounds and plays like a heavier man, which produces the hits and the occasional penalty and not much else.

The Intangibles

Tenth overall in 2019, two seasons, 118 games, 33 points, all of them here.

18 goals and 15 assists, and a plus-2.

He is twenty-two, a Russian winger who came over at twenty, and last season he went backwards in every column.

A tenth-overall pick with 33 points in 118 games at twenty-two is not a failure yet, and it is not going well. What the file has is a real forechecking motor, ordinary speed, a soft shot and two seasons of declining production. There is time. There is not much evidence.