Vancouver Canucks prospect Vasily Podkolzin’s KHL team St. Petersburg SKA of the KHL is currently in their first-round playoff matchup against Dinamo Minsk. It is a best of seven series that SKA is expected to win without much difficulty.

In game one, Podkolzin gave his team a 3-1 lead with this beauty of a wrister which clocked in at 71.1 mph, according to CanucksArmy’s very own Chris Faber.

Here is another angle of the goal:

And as Chris said, one more for the kids:

Podkolzin finished the game with one goal, one shot on net, and 12:27 of ice time.

As Faber pointed out in this week’s mailbag, whether or not Podkolzin comes to the Canucks this season depends largely on how deep SKA goes into the KHL playoffs. As stated above, they are expected to beat Dinamo Minsk without much pushback, but the rounds proceeding will be less certain.

There are also various factors involved, including the World Championships, but Canucks general manager Jim Benning has gone on the record saying he would be surprised if the World Championships weren’t cancelled.

SKA and Dinamo Minsk play game two on Thursday at 8:30 AM Pacific Time, and we will have you covered if anything notable happens in that game regarding the Canucks’ top prospect.