I remain flummoxed by the Edmonton Oilers lack of draft success with Russian players who play in Russia in the year they are chosen. I do have hope for Matvey Petrov (more on Petrov here) and (if they ever come over) a couple of other prospects in the KHL. The acquisition of Vasily Podkolzin is an interesting wrinkle in the Oilers ongoing challenges in deploying Russian players successfully. The Oilers and Podkolzin need each other. Right here, right now. Badly.
Podkolzin and the Oilers
In 137 games, Podkolzin has scored 15 goals and 29 points as an NHL player. In August, just before the trade, The Ahtletic ran a great piece from Thomas Drance and Harman Dayal that put things in perspective for the young winger. The two men, who are brilliant writers and have their finger on the pulse of that Canucks roster, painted a fairly dire picture of Podkolzin’s situation. The fact he was dealt 11 days later confirms the kind of situation the young winger was facing on the left coast.
Podkolzin in Edmonton has a chance to be the No. 3 LW or No. 4 LW, or the No 3 RW or No. 4 RW. Evander Kane’s health concerns suggest the LW depth chart opening night could be Jeff Skinner, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Podkolzin and Mattias Janmark. Personally, I think Janmark wins the battle (and plays with Adam Henrique and Connor Brown on the third line) but we’ll see. On right wing, my depth chart is Zach Hyman, Viktor Arvisson, Connor Brown and Corey Perry/Derek Ryan and you can slide Podkolzin in as you wish. I think his best chance is on left wing, and he’ll need to deal with prospects like Raphael Lavoie in order to make it.
In his three combined seasons with Vancouver, Podkolzin is scoring 1.22 pts-60 at five-on-five. Using those three seasons and the Oilers roster as a comparable, Podkolzin’s offensive comparables (not in style, but in production) are Mattias Janmark (1.22) and Dylan Holloway (1.17). When Holloway was drafted, I wrote “I do believe that’s going to be the concern moving forward when projecting him on a skill line” and that’s the case for all three men who are in this paragraph. It doesn’t mean these men can’t play, it does mean than Janmark (a third round pick) covered the draft bet far more impressively than the two top 15 selections.
I like the Podkolzin bet. I believe he could emerge as a useful player for the Oilers. His speed will be obvious on the third or fourth line. I don’t believe he is going to emerge as a 20-goal scorer unless gifted minutes with Connor McDavid and or Leon Draisaitl. Entering camp, I have him below Janmark on the left side and Connor Brown on the right wing. That’s fourth line.
For those bothered by the menu blocking half their screen. I believe the problem’s resolved. Let me know if it persists. As always. Flush your browser cache.
Whatever tweak you made actually gave me that menu on my PC. Never had it before. Clearing cache doesn’t help. (I use Firefox, if that matters.)
Ditto…
Same here. Menu appeared for the first time.
Better on my tablet now – thanks!
Puck Pedia:
Jarvis #Canes 8 year $7.42M Cap Hit:
Yr 1 $2M Base & $7.233M Signing Bonus
Yr 2 6M & 3.41M SB
Yr 3 4.25M & 4M SB
Yr 4 6.57M
Yr 5 6.57M
Yr 6 6.57M
Yr 7 1M & 5.187M SB
Yr 8 1M & 5.57M SB
Amounts above include the present value of all deferred compensation. 15.67M Total is deferred across multiple seasons until July 1, 2032 (1 day after contract expires)
The Jarvis contract is crazy. it’s a game changer. Good timing for Draisaitl.
I wonder where the line will be drawn on deferred salary.
There could be tax advantages for the player here too potentially.
I wonder how it affects buyouts. I tried buying out the last year of Jarvis’ contract and it doesn’t seem to properly account for the deferred salary.
How long did it take for the Vancouver Canuck to get hit with the Luongo cap recapture penalty?
Many of the long term contracts like Luongo’s 12 year deal were defacto salary deferrals since the players would have been placed on LTIR for a few seasons.
Vancouver ended up with a 3 year cap recapture penalty of $3 million when Bettman unilaterally changed the rules.
Again, not correct.
The premise was not that Luongo would go on LTIR for the last few seasons – the team would still need to deal with the $5.3MM cap hit.
The premise was that he would retire given the salary in the last few years was $1MM (as opposed to over > $10MM in the first season.
It was the opposite of salary deferral.
Geez.
There was no expectation of retirement.
Gillis said at the time he thought Luongo could play past 40.
Right, and you actually think Gillis believed that?
Its not quite on the level of calling a front-loaded contract “salary deferral” but….
Bettman didn’t unilaterally change anything. The recapture penalty was negotiated as part of the revised CBA in 2013 which both sides voted to approve. Terms conceded by the players were in exchange for other terms more important to them.
Jarvis contract looks interesting. But we all know if Oil and Drai try this the only thing the NHL will agree to is confiscating a draft pick for Calgary.
— NHL hockey management is very old school, mostly not bright lights in the field of management or business skills.
— Reading about the rules for this deferred salary: it seems like a no brainer
— There have been a dearth of offer sheets over the years as well: that too ought to be a no brainer
— Reminds me of the scene in many movies when the protagonist comes into the hick town trying to shake things up :”You better watch yourself son, that’s not how we do things in this here parts”
— Dumb
Comment from Traveller explaining why this hasn’t been done before.
— Thanks ! How you do that “hyperlink” it’s good feature !
— Interest rates were above 4% for many years from 2012 so it’s a generous explanation as to why it hasn’t been done.
— I mention Ohtani below. I don’t know if he understood the implications of his which is around 375mm PV. Or if he makes so much money he didn’t care. He accepted a massive haircut and the Dodgers saved just a ton
— I’d bet the farm though that his agent did not accept any deferral in his comp and got full freight up front.
Libor 12 month was below 1% from 2012-2018. In 2018 and 2019 it rose, peaking briefly at around 3% and dropped back down below 1% by 2020. It started rising again in 2022.
Financially the player taking the deferral is making an unsecured loan to the team at the posted Libor rate +1.25%.
Andy Strickland interviews Dylan Holloway…starts in middle. Considering the flexibility limitations he already has with his left wrist, one should definitely not criticize him for choosing financial security rather than the sh$t three year offer the Oilers were foisting upon him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7sJAJ72X_E
I know we don’t have much luck with Russian forwards. Anyhow I’m game for $100 to charity that Podkolzin scores more Goals in the N.H.L in the next 2 years than Hollywood does.
My argument has been Broberg + Holloway >> Jeff Skinner, since that is where the money required to sign the pair went.
Short term, Skinner might have the edge, but in the medium and long term it was penny wise and pound foolish to make that choice, especially since it is likely only one year of Skinner.
I don’t see where I criticized the Podkolzin acquistion. The Oilers can acquire as many million dollar “lottery” tickets as they want. I am fine with the Podkolzin acquisition.
Hopefully, it means the end of Perry.
Holloway had a real opportunity to play up and down the line-up
with the best for years. Grabbing the money and opportunity for Broberg was a no-brainer Holloway is going to make a few extra million in the short term but he might of cooked his goose long term. All of a sudden Holloway has pressure and his teammates see he has a whopping 9 career goals yet is treated like Prince Charles.
I would argue that the money went to Kulak and Ceci.
I get D-men are projects that take more time to mature than forwards-centres. Broberg was picked in the top 10 with his pedigree alone it boggles my mind that he’s still relatively a unknown 6 years later. Of course high picks should get treated differently but Broberg was brought along like a 4th rounder. With high picks either they’re in your plans are not. I definitely get why his agent asked for a move last Christmas and l believe they let it be known that they’re not signing before trying the offer sheet game.
There Oilers drafted a left handed dman and force-fed him right side defence because he was blocked.
Them they extended Kulak. He’s a good player, but as soon as he signed that extension I suspected Broberg’s days were numbered.
Good for Broberg. Hopefully he hasa long career, grows into that contract and becomes something like Boumeester, Kulak, etc.
I’ve responded in the past why is it Skinner? Why not Henrique or Arvidsson?
Jackson would go back and sign Skinner to that contract again without hesitation.
Skinner is one season removed from 37 goals and 82 points in 79 games (and Tage Thompson is NOT McDavid or Drai) and has been a positive goal share player for a meh team three years in a row.
Skinner + Ceci > Holloway + Broberg.
Broberg and Holloway should have been signed to extensions well before the playoffs and free agency. It’s true that the agents could have delayed. But based on the interview posted by Godot it sounds like Jackson/Holland didn’t even start negotiations until well after free agency, and the players were already presented with offer sheets.
Its been reported that Holland was instructed back in December/January to get contracts done with these two player.
Stauffer cites that one with 100% certainty – I know he can be “voice for the org” but he put that one out there with as much certainty as one can and I don’t think he does that if not true.
So either Holland didn’t so that, or Holloway was told a different story from his agent, or he’s mistaken in the interview. Because he says:
“21:18 yeah I mean it was kind of weird like we knew about the offer sheet before we even had any negotiations with Edmonton which is kind of weird um we were trying to get a deal done “
You have a better memory I’m drawing a blank. The only Russians I remember getting 20 for the oilers was Kovalenko-Semenov and they only did it once. I wonder if were the worst team percentage wise in N.H.L history when it comes to Russian forward player fertility only two 20 goal scorers in 45 years.
Let me update my “godots whipping boys” list:
–
Tyson Barrie-Cody Ceci–Evan Bouchard–Jeff SkinnerYou forgot Kassian before that (although he didn’t have to stretch and make up reasons to blame Kass most of the time).
You mentioned this 3-year deal the Oilers “foisted” on him before and i asked you how you know the Oilers were demanding a 3-year deal?
As it turns out, the Oilers also had a shorter term offer for Holloway.
Meh, whatever, you keeping harping on people criticizing HolloBro for taking more money. I’ve seen little of this. What I have seen is people saying they aren’t worth that money. Either way. Why do you care so much about what people might think? You seem personally slighted.
This is a great interview. Holloway is pretty open. And the Oilers screwed up big time.
This Jarvis contract looks like clear cap circumvention on the surface, even though the league signed off on it.
Seems like something the NHL will (rightly) reverse course on in a few years and screw the teams they formerly gave blessing to.
The Oilers using this loophole will only increase the chances that the league ultimately tacks the entire deferred salary onto the Cap in the final year of any deals like this.
That was my first thought as well. Interesting story to follow.
Will be interesting for sure.
It’s crazy how the NHL has allowed this.
It’s blatant cap circumvention.
The Oilers might as well jump on the boat here because by the time the bill comes due with a penalty, their window could be closed.
Not really. The provision for deferred salary and its accounting in cap has been in the CBA at least since 2012 and discussed extensively. Thing is, since the NPV cap hit is calculated using the LIBOR + 1.25%, for most of the time since 2012, this interest rate has been low enough that it wasn’t worth it for anyone to bother. It has only become meaningful since 2023.
And even still to have a big impact on Cap, you have to ask the player to defer a lot for a long time. On an 8 year deal, to save ~ $500,000 on the cap annually during those years, at today’s rates, a player I believe would probably have to defer $2.5 mill a season (if done evenly over the 8 seasons) Big ask for a lot of these guys.
interest rates are higher because inflation has been higher. A deferral is having both the team and the player betting on interest rates and/or inflation rates. If they move up or down during the contract, someone loses at least financially, though it appears the team’s cap savings get locked in on the day of SPC registration. And hedges against those movements aren’t free either.
Thank you. I did not know that.
Wow, I don’t think you post very often, but when you do, you swing that bat hard.
So they’re leveraging high interest rates and pairing that with the existing deferred payment mechanism to lower Jarvis’s current cap hit.
That’s a very nuanced and clever interpretation. Thank you.
The high interest rates lower the Net Present Value.
This is the type of shit that happens when you have two huge brains in Dellow and Tulsky sitting together in the same room.
Just have someone send a third rounder to Calgary, probably the Oilers, and let’s call it a day..
Very informative comment. Thank you.
This mechanism of leveraging high interest rates is somewhat akin to financial strategies like the yen carry trade, except economic conditions are exploited against the cba to achieve a more favorable cap hit.
Not that it really matters but LIBOR no longer exists – I’m not sure what reference rate they use now, likely SORF (secured overnight financing rate).
— Yeah this is a good synopsis of what I read re: deferred comp.
— Ohtani’s contract is not widely understood as trending toward the biggest bargain in the history of baseball as measured against WaR.
— He’s deferring close to 90% of his salary: being paid in years 10-20 (at which point he’ll be presumably in a better tax jurisdiction that Cali as a bonus)
— So yeah there is some risk to the parties with deferred comp (as well as the insolvency that Godot mentioned)
— But for guys who have been paid and will still get paid who think like Ohtani and clearly have winning over the biggest payouts it’s a great strategy.
— In 2013 rates above 5% so there were opportunities in the past as well.
— Baseball executives have tons of hedge fund trained or Ivy League educated guys who would understand this deferral (it’s one of my hobby horses how “bad” most NHL management is)
— Now that the cat is out of the bag and NHL management no doubt are given “NPV valuations for dummies” we ought to see more of them. Plus it’s a copycat league
Agreed.
Johnny Hockey at the Brick tournament.
https://x.com/nielsontsn1260/status/1829533556311560661?s=61
It still boggles my mind, especially the circumstances.
A spillies favorite.
The Jarvis contract is an interesting one.
https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/news/sources-hurricanes-and-seth-jarvis-agree-to-63-2-million-contract-with-unique-deferred-structure
That deferred salary can go poof in a backruptcy. Mario Lemieux as a creditor had to find partners and investors to take over the Penguins as a creditor when they went bankrupt, and it took a long time for him to come out ahead. (Mario was out like $30 something million, and had to convert that debt to equity, and add several million in capital to gain control of the Penguins out of bankruptcy).
It took several years for Gretzky to get back his deferred salary of $8 million from the NHL when the Coyotes went bankrupt and the NHL took over.
Becoming a creditor of your employer is generally NOT a good idea for an employee.
There are ways around that. Putting the money in trust is one. Hope they do this.
Carolina Hurricanes lock up Seth Jarvis for 8 years @ $7.5 million.
Should be an extreme value deal as the cap rises and takes him to age 30.
Also did you read about the deferred payment in year 9. Interesting loop hole that keeps the cap down and guarantees the money to the player. Hopefully Edmonton is looking at this to sign Drisital. And hopefully it happens quick before they close the loop hole.
It seems the league has already signed off on this.
https://www.dailyfaceoff.com/news/sources-hurricanes-and-seth-jarvis-agree-to-63-2-million-contract-with-unique-deferred-structure
Well it would be around long enough for Potential Draisaitl, Bouchard and McDavid contracts. Hopefully Edmonton uses this. It’s up to the players in the end though. Most guys want their money sooner then later. It’s worth asking Drai and Connor, they’ve already made millions. Bouch on the other hand, who knows.
The difference being Jarvis is only 22 while Draisaitl and McDavid are approaching 30.
And???
Such an odd statement trying to find a negative narrative for the Oilers.
If anything, the age favors the Oilers given Drai and Connor both have already have generational wealth and Jarvis does not.
Negative is all he does. And his narratives usually get debunked into nothing, The Great None.
Isn’t there usually more risk in drafting players from the Euro leagues?
I have a good feeling about Podkolzin. He did well under Boudreau and it feels like Knoblauch could help bring balance to his game.
I don’t have good feelings about Perry and Ryan. They are taking up slots that are needed for players like Podkolzin, Lavoie, Savoie, Jarventie, Philip. Ryan and Perry didn’t bring much in the cup run. And I don’t know that waiving Perry is a good look for your organization. His contract doesn’t make sense to me.
He is a very interesting young man.
Married very early and us already a father.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/canucks-podkolzin-wife-sasha-baby
Smart and lucky man. He’s going to have a nice life for his family in Edmonton.
I don’t know that Ryan is done though it’s true he didn’t shine this postseason. I think he knew from day one that the second year of his contract might be him showing kids in the A how it’s done.
That was always my expectation from the day the deal was announced. The Mike Smith Manoeuver.
If Vasily really wants to make the team he can start with throwing some bone crunching hits and take a fight or two. I know, not really his style but…
This roster at present looks like one that can win a division, but it’s not one to go to war with.
I would suggest that he is penciled on to the team – current situation would have both him and Lavoie (and Ryan and Perry) on the roster.
Now, 3LW vs. 4RW vs. 13F is at stake.
Sounds like Warren Foegele but in Russian, and cheap.
Foegele certainly wasn’t in the 5v5 P/60 scoring range LT mentions though.
Foegele without Draisaitl is a 4th line speed and energy player.
LT, I like how you drop a line or two from a song or two in your write-ups. I usually find it about half the time but I’m not as musically knowledgeable as some here are.
With that said, this morning I got…Jesus Jones?
I didn’t have a song in mind but do love ‘as you wish’ by Yiruma
I too thought it might be a Jesus Jones reference. Honestly, thought, my first singing of that line was to Fatboy Slim.
Hoping for a Nichuskin 2.0 situation and not an every-other-Oiler-Russian forward one. Nothing but an educated wish at this point though!
Only the on ice part though!!
Arrows have gone opposite ways since but, Podkolzin had more goals and more assists in his rookie season than Holloway has in his career. He’s also known as a more responsible player.
Of course, I’d rather have Holloway but a re-set for Podkolzin could do wonders.
Ideally, I’d rather have both but yes, a re-set could lead to a favorable outcome.
LT mentioned that Pdkn wouldn’t get 20 goals unless he was on the top two lines. I would call that a win, no? We’ve had other wingers on those lines that couldn’t produce like that.
A friend who watches all the Nucks games, says Podzie’s issue is hands. Right spot, right time, poor finish. While popping 35 might not be real, regaining confidence will no doubt help. Part of the issue I’m told in Van was that he was constantly being shuffled around and couldn’t get into a groove.