Vasily Podkolzin Earned Himself An Oilers Contract For Life After Proving He'll Beat The Brakes Off Of Anyone Who Touches McDavid
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.It was a pretty quick night for Vasily Podkolzin last night against Anaheim. He ended up getting ejected from the game just 8 minutes into the night. He played a total of 2 minutes and 35 seconds. But they were most likely the best 2:35 of his career, because he can now remain an Oiler for life.
You see…when you play on a line with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, you really only have one job. That is to stay out of their way and don't fuck it up. As long as you do that, you're fine. But if you really want to make yourself indispensable, then you also make sure to treat yourself like a bodyguard for the best two hockey players on the planet out there. If anyone even looks at Connor McDavid the wrong way, you make sure that the next thing they are looking at is your fist pounding their eyes shut.
Which is exactly what we saw last night.
This is a man playing his role to perfection. For starters, it's a great job by not immediately going over and starting a brawl right away. There's nothing dumber than a guy starting a giant fight while an injured player is still down on the ice. I don't know if you know this or not, but ice skates have giant razor blades attached to the bottom of them. So when there's a fight surrounding a guy laying on the ice, that situation can get kind of dicey.
Podkolzin waits to make sure that his captain is alright first, and can get himself up off the ground. And then as soon as he realizes the coast is clear? It's Drew Helleson Ass Kicking Time. Let's just look at this image again.
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.You've got 4 Ducks just standing there, watching their boy get tuned the fuck up for taking McDavid hard into the net. Podkolzin isn't out on the ice to light up the scoresheet. He's a career 20-30 points guy. But he was all over the scoresheet last night after this beatdown.
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I honestly don't know if I've ever seen a one-man fighting penalty before. 2:35 in ice time on the night for Podkolzin, and 27 PIMs. What a night.
Scouting The Refs -- A fight does not require two willing participants. Rule 46.1 deems a fight to have occurred “when at least one player punches or attempts to punch an opponent repeatedly” and Rule 46.14 levies a major on any player who fights. Podkolzin deserved everything he got. The instigator minor fit Rule 46.11’s criteria almost by definition – among them, “obvious retribution for a previous incident in the game.” His ejection comes from the aggressor rule, Rule 46.2: a player who “continues to throw punches in an attempt to inflict punishment on his opponent who is in a defenseless position or who is an unwilling combatant” is assessed a fighting major and a game misconduct. He started it, and he kept throwing. Instigator: check. Aggressor: check.
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The miss was on the other side of the ledger. Rule 46.1’s bar for a fighting major is not landing punches, it’s punching or even attempting to punch. Helleson dropped his gloves and attempted to throw. He didn’t turtle; he tried to respond and simply got rocked. By the rule’s own standard, that’s a participant, meaning matching fighting majors should be the call. Instead, Helleson got two minutes and Anaheim skated off with a five-minute power play.
Either way, the Ducks would have come out of that one with a powerplay. If Drew Helleson got 5 minutes for fighting, then it would have been Podkolzin's 2-minute instigator that gave Anaheim the powerplay. And considering Cutter Gauthier scored just over a minute later after all of this, it didn't matter if it was 2 minutes or 5 minutes. So all of that is a wash. And at the end of the day, I'm sure the Oilers are perfectly fine with Podkolzin sending a message to the rest of the league that you're going to get your shit rocked if you get too aggressive with McDavid out there. And I'm sure the even bigger thing here is that refs are going to get a call from ol' Gary in the coming days about calling things tighter around the net.
And one last thing--Macarooner has now skyrocketed up the rankings as the top nickname in hockey.
Guy just loves to crush a little dessert in bed while winding down from the night. So be it. Can't be wearing your street clothes into your own bed.