Oilers trade for Vasily Podkolzin offers a clue of whats to come

If there was a trophy on offer for the most entertaining and interesting NHL offseason, the Edmonton Oilers would be firm favourites right now for this year's award. And that was before Sunday's latest news update regarding the team.

As announced by the team on social media, the Oilers have have acquired forward Vasily Podkolzin from the Canucks. In exchange, Edmonton has sent their 2025 fourth round draft pick to Vancouver, which was originally acquired from the Ottawa Senators.

How does this impact Holloway and Broberg?

Understandably, one of the first and most important questions is how this impacts the two offer sheets the Oilers received from the St. Louis Blues, for Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway? The initial instinct is that this alludes to Holloway being allowed to leave, given he is a forward like Podkolzin.

From a financial perspective, Podkolzin has two seasons remaining on his current deal before he becomes a restricted free agent, with an Average Annual Value (AAV) of $1 million. As such, as per Puck Pedia, at the time of writing the Oilers are now $8,225,541 over the allowed salary cap space for the 2024-25 NHL season.

Assuming the trade does indeed signify that Holloway is going to be allowed to leave, this means you can deduct his $2,290,457 AAV from the $8,225,541 which the Oilers need to get back in the black. Broberg's two-year offer sheet from the Blues has a AAV of $4,580,917, which the team also needs to decide whether to match or not.

Kane set to give a helping hand

In all likelihood now, Evander Kane will begin the 2024-25 campaign on Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) due to the decision for him to undergo surgery. As such that's another $5.125 million for the Oilers to play around with, albeit only as a temporary reprieve unless he remains on LTIR for the entire 2024-25 regular season.

Clearly the timing of the trade for Podkolzin is not a coincidence - we just don't know for sure yet what it means for the future of Holloway and Broberg in Edmonton. However, if the trade does allude to Holloway walking, you can be sure this will be a polarising decision by controversial new general manager Stan Bowman.

We've already written that we predict Broberg will also be allowed to walk, reinforced by the report that his relationship with the Oilers is essentially beyond repair. However, this would then mean the organisation loses two former first round picks with intriguing upside in exchange for a second and third round draft pick, which just doesn't seem right or settle well with us.

In any event, at least we won't have long to wait to find out how the trade for Podkolzin impacts the Oilers. With a deadline of Tuesday for them to decide whether to match one or both offer sheets from the Blues, there's going to be even more interesting news to write about soon enough, for this year's presumptive NHL entertaining offseason champions.

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