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Thomas Drance on Podkolzin’s play, Pius Suter and more



Thomas Drance from The Athletic joined the guys and talked about a big Game 4 from Vasily Podkolzin and if there is a path to re-signing Pius Suter.

34 Comments

  1. I gave up guessing about the Podkolzin trade. What I am convinced about is that Canucks should never have drafted him in the first place. Also it’s not hard to imagine how well he would play with 3rd/4th best player in the league.

  2. Padkolzin can be a an allrounder type player or even a power forward. Thanks to Tocchet, he is pushed out. Hoglander's game suffered last year. In my view, Tocchet was responsible for that..

  3. Podkolzin has been better coached and given a chance to play in Edmonton. That's the difference. Outside of goalies, in recent years the only way to get decent development of prospects was drafting Swedes and US College players so someone else did the job for them. Last season in Abbotsford was the first time we saw the benefits of having them under more scrutiny from the head office, when they sorted out their coaching on the farm. The charmless offensive by Team Rutherford might make it hard to resign Suter, after how they treated him during his last negotiations.

  4. The way they went about developing Podkolzin messed with his head. I think even Hoglander has some of those issues also. Instead of letting him play he was benched a lot. Made him scared to make mistakes then you begin to overthink. I think he is starting to let it go and letting some of his natural instinct out. Not how coaches try and develop young players. Young players make mistakes and they had no patience for it. You have to let them play. I still think they should try and get Jeannot and Ehlers to play on a line with Petterson. They pick up Rossi will not help if they don't resolve some other issues. We really need a power forward for the top two lines. So I would practice patience till you get what you need. No knee jerk trades. Plus take a gamble on Max Comtois. He was sort of black balled. We could have had Evander Kane. Good players need room to play.

  5. It's just hilarious how high the bar was set for pods in canucks fantasy land. Shit like this is why we're losers. Cannot belive we gave away a TOP 10 pick 23 YEAR OLD.

  6. "The Pod" or "Podzilla" has become a great depth player for the Oilers. He proved it last night when he made the great pass to Dreisatl for the OT goal. He's been playing great on the forecheck and defensively and has scored a goal. He hits hard, and can take hits and he has hockey smarts and works hard whenever he's on the ice. If Oilers win Stanley, the Pod will be a solid part of the team. As a Canucks fan, I wasn't happy when he got traded because I felt he had more potential than they were allowing him. Canucks loss is Oilers gain, and Podzilla will get better in the years to come.

  7. With all this dump and chase / board battle hockey, how high is Conor Garland’s trade value now on expiring deal? Time to recoup?

  8. Podz had a bad concussion in Abby early on in 23/24. Wasn't playing well after. Takes time to recover. Wasn't developing. Canucks moved on. Why is this never mentioned…

  9. Lots of players that weren't good enough to crack the canuck lineup had great post seasons. Makes you think

  10. Not a huge fan of Drance, but he's spot on with our deployment of Podz. I'd take it a step further and say, they should have done that with Gadjovich as well. He's become a genuinely good 4th line energy guy on a 3 time Stanley Cup finalist team. We keep overpaying for these guys in free agency and trades when we could have just kept and developed the ones we drafted. But nope, idiotic management in regards to Allvin and Benning. Not to mention shortsighted coaching. He was also spot on with management's trade deadline ineptitude. Not sending out Boeser and Suter was beyond idiotic.

  11. Chasing a wild card spot and a first round exit, BUT OWNERS WOULD GET AT LEAST 2 PLAYOFFS GATES, 3 IF THEY WERE LUCKY! … So why move Boeser for anything when you could get NOTHING? And the beat goes on… and the beat goes on… Thanks for being here, Aquilini family… ugh

  12. Podkolzin probably would never live up to what a 10th overall pick player is expected to do, but his play in Edmonton right now is proof that the Canucks just failed in his development. From Day 1 we have heard that the kid had an unbelievable work ethic. There should have been a clear plan to give him some seasoning in the AHL, and once he is called up, give him a consistent, solid role like Drance said. He probably wouldn't become a great power forward no matter what, but a solid two-way forward who can play a middle six role like he is doing now as an Oiler? The Canucks botched that one – the trade actually was a worse decision than to draft him too high.

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