The trade that sent Vasily Podkolzin to the Edmonton Oilers in return for Ottawa’s fourth round pick in the 2025 draft was never going to be a popular one.

The Vancouver Canucks fanbase, having just watched Gustav Forsling win the Stanley Cup, are understandably a little touch-and-go when it comes to trading any young players who still have even a whiff of potential. That’s doubly true when the player in question is anywhere close to power-forward-adjacent. This is, after all, the franchise that gave up Cam Neely before he broke out.

There’s also the valuation angle. The Canucks spent a 10^th overall selection on Podkolzin just five years ago. That pick came in an Entry Draft that saw Matt Boldy, Cole Caufield, and Thomas Harley all go in the next couple of choices. To swap out a 10^th overall pick for a pick that starts somewhere in the late ’90s at best is never fun, even with the space of time in between.

And, of course, there’s the unfortunate truth that should Podkolzin ever reach the potential that once had him drafted so high, he’d now be doing it for the hated Edmonton Oilers. That’s just one extra kick in the teeth.

In the immediate aftermath, this trade has a bitter taste, and that was an almost inevitable action. In the new light of the morning after, the deal can start to make a bit more sense, but even that sense-making can only do so much to mitigate the unsavoriness.

Really, it just comes down to a numbers game.

The Canucks already have 14 NHL-ready forwards on their roster heading into 2024/25 in the form of Elias Pettersson, JT Miller, Brock Boeser, Jake DeBrusk, Conor Garland, Dakota Joshua, Danton Heinen, Teddy Blueger, Pius Suter, Kiefer Sherwood, Nils Höglander, Daniel Sprong, Nils Åman, and Phil di Giuseppe.

Given contracts and other off-ice considerations, we can look at that list and note only a small handful of players that the Canucks’ brass might even be willing to cut during or after training camp.

With the Canucks typically rolling an active roster of 13 forwards, that already meant that – barring a preseason injury – one of the forwards on that list was not making the team. In order to make the Canucks out of camp, Podkolzin was going to have to beat out that 14^th forward, and then also whoever was in line to be the 13^th forward.

And that’s all just to get into the pressbox as the designated healthy scratch each night. Actually getting ice-time was an even steeper incline to what was already an uphill battle, Blade-style, with ice skates on.

Podkolzin would have had to do all this while also keeping ahead of all those other forwards within the system vying for the exact same opportunity. That’s Linus Karlsson, Arshdeep Bains, Aatu Raty, Tristen Nielsen, Max Sasson, and maybe even Jonathan Lekkerimäki.

What we’re likely seeing with this trade is the front office and coaching staff getting together to read the tea leaves and – probably accurately – presage Podkolzin getting cut in about six weeks’ time. In anticipating that, the team clearly wanted to get what they could get for him, which in this case was a fourth round pick, as opposed to losing him on waivers.

Now, there are still going to be plenty for whom this explanation doesn’t hold enough water. It all lines up fairly logically, but in the realm of risk-reward, there’s a real argument to be made that the potential upside still potentially lurking within Podkolzin is still worth more than a measly fourth round pick.

The thinking there is that it might be more valuable to give Podkolzin one last shot to impress in Training Camp, and then either make space for him on the team or trade him at a slightly-elevated value. The other side of that thinking is that, if Podkolzin doesn’t impress in Training Camp, he can then go on waivers and all the team misses out on is a fourth round pick, a pick that has some 10% or less chance of actually becoming a decent NHL player from the get-go.

There’s plenty of merit to that line of thinking.

It’s also a point at which we can return to a different sort of numbers game, and that’s the number of opportunities already received.

If we’re trying to answer less the question of ‘why’ Podkolzin was traded and more ‘why now,’ still weeks ahead of camp, it all comes down to this. The fact of the matter is that Podkolzin has already received so many more opportunities – and what coaches call ‘looks’ – than all of the other young forwards in the system he’s competing with.

Podkolzin has taken part in three NHL training camps. Last year, he got cut early on, and he still made it back up for 19 regular season games and two more in the playoffs – a recall that came with a lot of extra on-ice time with head coach Rick Tocchet.

Compare that with the six total games Karlsson has received, despite being a year older than Podkolzin. Or the eight games that Bains, someone who’s down a lot more than Podkolzin to earn a call-up, received last year.

The point is, the team has seen plenty of Podkolzin already, and if the front office and coaching staff agree it’s time to move on, they’ve got plenty to base that assessment on. And it’s easy to see how part of their desire to move on now stems from a desire to give more direct opportunities to the likes of Karlsson, Bains, Raty, Nielsen, and the rest of the Abbotsford gang in Training Camp.

Podkolzin already got his ‘looks.’ With only six exhibition games on the schedule, the Canucks only have so many chances to adjudicate players this preseason. In clearing out Podkolzin, they’re in part ensuring viewing opportunities for the players they believe have the greatest chance of doing something with the opportunity – a list that Podkolzin was plainly no longer on.

Still, as we said at the outset, even with both ‘numbers games’ in mind, the trade remains a bitter pill to swallow. In the end, it comes down to the Edmonton of it all.

The possibility of Podkolzin ‘hitting’ one province over is nightmarish, and will continue to be a worry until Podkolzin ages out of the potential. The notion that acquiring Podkolzin might make it easier for the Oilers to slip by the double-offer-sheet chaos involving Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg is just sandpaper icing on the cake of conflicted feelings.

There are plenty of those in the fanbase who feel something along the lines of ‘trading Podkolzin for a fifth or sixth round pick to literally anywhere else would have been a better outcome to trading him for a fourth to Edmonton.’ And that’s a completely understandable feeling.

One has to assume that the fourth round pick was the best offer the Canucks received. Folks will wonder, however, how much better the offer was than what was on the table from other teams – and if the difference in price is really worth throwing any size of bone to their team’s most hated rival.