Nobody can question Vasily Podkolzin’s work ethic.

Over his two-season tenure with the Edmonton Oilers, we’ve seen Podkolzin be one of the first players on the ice before practices, stay afterwards to fine-tune his skills, and put in the work to improve his game during the off-season.

Podkolzin has worked with his skills coach Ned Lukacevic over the last few off-seasons, and that continued this summer when the two recently put in some training sessions together. We checked in with Lukacevic to see how their sessions went.

Q: Tell me about the training sessions you recently had with Podkolzin. How long were the sessions?

“We got around 12 sessions in, and they went very well. We’d work together on the ice for one hour, one-on-one training, and we’d go very hard.

“He’d come in after the gym. He works out down the road in Burnaby with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ brother, who is a big trainer in Vancouver. He trains there, and then he comes and trains on the ice with me afterwards.

“And it’s just full throttle. There are no breaks. There’s no talking. We do the reps and run through the practice.”

Q: What type of drills did you guys work on?

“We did a lot of work on wall play and down-low play. Very Zach-Hyman-esque type of work. So with that, we worked on a lot of deflections, a lot of tips, and working in the tight areas.

“We also did puck-handling work with the Power Edge Pro (PEP) training aid, just like Connor McDavid does, working on quick drills and reaction time, working on his offensive instincts, creativity and edge work, and all of that goes hand-in-hand with the PEP training.”

Q: Have you used the Power Edge Pro training aid with Podkolzin in the past?

“That specific drill with PEP, no. We’ve done some of it in the past, but mostly to warm up.

“But we focused more on it this time around. It’s good for reaction time, edge work, deceptiveness and creativity. It’s also great for conditioning, because you can do like nine or 10 reps in a row and you’re bagged. So those are killer workouts for him. We worked a lot on his conditioning in the sessions, too. It’s a lot of one-on-one, so there’s naturally not a lot of breaks.

seanpangs

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Oilers' Vasily Podkolzin is hard at work this offseason. His skills coach Ned Lukacevic sent me this vid and said this: "Pods' shot is looking extremely good. He looks lighter on his skates. He looks graceful with his movements from edge to edge. Powerful but very smooth"

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4:25 PM · Aug 12, 2026

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