Oilers make two trades in response to offer sheets

One trade was made late last night, the other just came down the pike today.

Trade #1 - Oilers trade Ottawa's 2025 fourth round pick to Vancouver in exchange for Russian dual side winger Vasily Podkolzin

That fourth round pick, if you'll remember, was originally acquired by the Oilers in the Roby Jarventie trade when they traded Xavier Bourgault and Jake Chiasson to Ottawa in exchange for the more NHL ready Jarventie.

It's now been flipped to the Canucks in this trade.

Podkolzin was originally drafted by the Canucks in the 2019 NHL entry draft 10th overall. His boxcars in the KHL were not all that impressive, so what the Canucks scouting staff saw in this guy to take him 10th overall I'll never know - this is the kind of guy you roll the dice on in the fourth or fifth round, not the first. Podkolzin was taken two picks after the Oilers took Philip Broberg at eighth overall.

Unsurprisingly, Podkolzin hasn't really lived up to his draft position as he's spent his entire career up to now being shuttled back and forth between the minors and the Canucks. He's best described as a reclamation project that's getting a fresh start with a change of scenery. His high water mark was his rookie season when he went 14-12-26 in 79 games. Slightly inferior to Holloway in terms of a prospect but he's only costing the Oilers $2,000,000 against the cap for the next two seasons, something Holloway can't say as if the Oilers do end up matching the offer sheet then Holloway would cost the Oilers more than double that against the cap.

If you read the tea leaves this means that the Oilers likely aren't going to match Holloway's offer sheet and he's gone. Podkolzin seems to be his replacement in the lineup. The best you can say about him is he's injecting some skills into the bottom six forward group at this point. Somehow I doubt he'll have a shot at the top six forward group anytime soon, but never say never. Only time will tell whether this trade works out for the Oilers or not. He'll certainly have a better team around him in Edmonton than in Vancouver. Sometimes the change of scenery works, sometimes it doesn't. It's a low risk gamble that remains to be seen if it works or not.