VIDEO: Vancouver Canucks top prospect Vasili Podkolzin scores his first goal of the KHL season

The Vancouver Canucks’ top prospect Vasili Podkolzin scores his first goal of the season doing what he does best, being in front of the net.

As the Canucks season has come to an end, we now shift our eyes to their overseas prospects who are embarking on their 2020-21 seasons.

Today was a good day for Podkolzin. His KHL team, SKA St.Petersburg, won 6-4 in their third game of the season. Podkolzin scored the game-winning goal for SKA today when he set up on the edge of the crease and tipped in a strong pass from the defenceman and attacked the net.

As I previously mentioned, this was the third game of the season for Podkolzin. He had a tough second game of the year after a strong showing in the season opener. Podkolzin only played 9:24 of ice time in that second game. On Tuesday’s game, he played 12:33 and had two shots on net, one being the goal he tipped in.

SKA was outshot today by a count of 42-30. Though the team was heavily outshot, Podkolzin’s line was not.

With Podkolzin on the ice, SKA had a Corsi for percentage of 78.3%. That’s a +36.6% differential from team shot share to individual attempted shot share for Podkolzin. His line was once again able to control a lot of time in the offensive zone. SKA’s young guns line skated strong through the neutral zone and was ultra-aggressive when they were in their own zone.

Though he played a season-high 12:33 today, Podkolzin did not see any time on either special teams unit.

It is going to be tough for Podkolzin to pad his stats with powerplay production as his linemate Ivan Morozov (Vegas Golden Knights prospect) has been getting the net-front presence duties on the powerplay. This is the spot where Podkolzin does his best work offensively, as you can see from his goal today.

He will need to work his way onto that unit otherwise we will only be talking about 5-on-5 production.

In other news, the KHL website has also updated its height and weight information of Podkolzin, claiming that he is 192cm (6’3″) tall. I don’t know if I can 100% say that he is not 6’3″, but I am pretty certain he is still the shortest player on his young guns line, he is potentially taller than Kirill Marchenko, who is listed at 189cm (6’2″) on the KHL site.

Ivan Morozov is measured at 6’1″ on the KHL website yet he is noticeably taller than both Marchenko and Podkolzin. So who knows what’s going on with that Russian website!

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news on the height thing. The website also has him at 92kgs (203lbs). That is possible as he does look thicker than last season. It’s hard to tell on the ice but I just don’t think he grew three inches since being drafted.

In the end, it was a good performance from Podkolzin today and we will continue to follow his year in the KHL as it goes on.

SKA is back in action on Friday at 9:30 AM.