Podkolzin Ejected for 'One-Man Fight' After Defending McDavid

Vasily Podkolzin was ejected from the Edmonton Oilers’ game against the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday night after fighting Drew Helleson, who had driven Connor McDavid into the goal frame. Referee Cody Beach called it a “one-man fight”: Podkolzin took 27 penalty minutes, including a fighting major, an instigator minor and an aggressor misconduct, while Helleson got two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct and the hit itself drew no penalty. Anaheim scored on the power play that followed and won 5-4, while McDavid returned to the game and finished with a goal and three assists.

What happened to McDavid?

He was driven into the net, and the building went quiet. Eight minutes into a scoreless game at Rogers Place, McDavid drove to the Anaheim net and got a shot away, and defenceman Drew Helleson hit him into the goal frame. His knee struck the post and his upper body collided with the corner of the six-by-four-foot net, Daily Faceoff reports, and he stayed down clutching his leg while the crowd held its breath. He got to his feet, barked at Helleson and tried to go after him, and was held back by a referee.

Then his linemate went instead. Podkolzin went straight at Helleson, guarded by a linesman, and started throwing punches. Helleson dropped his gloves and tried to answer, and was rocked before he could respond, Scouting the Refs reports. McDavid missed the next few minutes and briefly went down the tunnel, and on his first shift back he levelled a huge hit on Ducks centre Leo Carlsson along the boards. The scare ended the way the best ones do: McDavid finished the night with a goal and three assists, and the Ducks still won the game.

Why was only Podkolzin penalised?

Because the officials decided Helleson had not fought back. Beach and Graham Skilliter, working his 900th career game, sorted it out at 8:06 of the first period, and the numbers tell the story of a one-sided ledger. Podkolzin: 27 penalty minutes, ejected, made up of two for instigating, five for fighting, ten as the aggressor and ten more as an instigator misconduct. Helleson: two penalty minutes, for unsportsmanlike conduct. The hit that started it all drew nothing at all: no charging, no boarding, no roughing on Helleson for the check that put McDavid into the post, Scouting the Refs reports.

Beach announced the penalty as a “one-man fight”, and the arithmetic of it decided the next five minutes. Podkolzin’s instigator minor and Helleson’s minor cancelled out, leaving the fighting major unmatched, which gave Anaheim a five-minute power play. Cutter Gauthier scored on it at 9:26 to make it 1-0. The same kind of uneven ledger has decided other games this season: Frank Nazar’s match penalty on Bo Horvat came with a two-game suspension, while Evan Rodrigues’ stick jab at Marco Rossi was downgraded on review and drew only the maximum fine.

What is a one-man fight under the rules?

A fight that needs only one willing participant, and a call that turns on whether the other man counts as one. Rule 46.1 says a fight has 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. Rule 46.2, the aggressor rule, adds a major and a game misconduct for a player who keeps throwing punches at an opponent in a defenceless position or who is an unwilling combatant. Podkolzin started it and kept throwing, so the instigator and the aggressor both fit, Scouting the Refs reports.

The miss, in that site’s reading, was on the other side of the ledger. Rule 46.1’s bar for a fighting major is not landing punches, it is punching or even attempting to punch, and Helleson dropped his gloves and attempted to throw. He did not turtle, he tried to respond and simply got rocked, and losing a fight has never been the standard for whether you were in one. By the rule’s own standard, Helleson was a participant, and matching fighting majors should have been the call. The precedent the site cites is Nikita Zadorov, punched by Milan Lucic in 2019, who never dropped his gloves and never threw a punch, and still got five for fighting because he grappled and held on. Helleson did more than Zadorov, and got less.

What did the call cost the Oilers?

A goal first, and the game in the end. Gauthier’s power-play goal at 9:26 put Anaheim ahead 1-0, and Edmonton tied it late in the period on an Evan Bouchard power-play goal set up by McDavid, who had just returned. The Ducks took a 4-2 lead into the final period and won 5-4, with the game finishing on 67 combined penalty minutes. The first period alone produced 51, the most in any first period this season, and Kasperi Kapanen and Pavel Mintyukov took matching fighting majors at 16:52 for contrast, Scouting the Refs reports. The period also saw Draisaitl take a run at Helleson and Max Jones cross-check Sam Colangelo, so the Podkolzin fight was the start of the night’s discipline ledger rather than the whole of it.

The cost was not only the goal. Podkolzin played 2:40 all night, and the Oilers lost one of their toughest players eight minutes into a game their captain had just been driven into the net in. Emil Heineman’s ejection for a knee-on-knee hit on Isaac Howard showed the same team losing a player to a major in the same month, and Anthony Mantha’s boarding major on Nikolas Matinpalo showed how quickly a hit on a vulnerable player turns into a hearing. Edmonton keeps paying for the plays around its captain, and Thursday was the most expensive version yet.

What did McDavid and his coach say?

McDavid appreciated the response and disliked the call, in the same breath. “Podzy, you know, stepped in there and was unfortunate to, you know, I’ve never seen that call before,” he said. “It was unfortunate there for sure, but yeah, I appreciate the response, obviously. I thought it was an unfortunate call. Didn’t like the call really one bit.” He also had a point about the hit itself, and the goal frame that did the damage: “I wish that we treated the net like we treat the end wall. If I do that to him, going Mach-1 into the end wall, it’s a five-game suspension and everything like that. The net is just as dangerous, in my opinion, with the goalie there, the post there. It’s just as dangerous.”

Coach Mike Babcock backed his player and aimed at the instigator call specifically. “The reaction was what it should have been,” Babcock said. “I didn’t like the fact that you get an instigator on a thing when they’ve run your guy into the net. The instigation of the whole thing was what? When they run your guy into the net?” Asked whether a defenceman is allowed to cross-check a man driving the net that hard, he smiled the question off: “That’s the good thing about it. I don’t have to ref.” McDavid’s scoring run this season has put him at the top of the league’s scoring race, and Thursday added a goal and three assists to it, plus a night his winger spent in the dressing room.

Has Podkolzin done this before?

Yes, and the last time it ended differently. On January 20, Jonathan Kovacevic hit McDavid, Podkolzin dropped the gloves immediately, and because Kovacevic fought back, Podkolzin’s night stopped at two plus five plus ten and he stayed in the game. On Thursday the trigger and the response were the same, and the difference was the other man: the officials felt Helleson did not fight back while Podkolzin kept going, so the aggressor rule applied and ended his night, Scouting the Refs reports.

The comparison that matters is not with January but with the plays the league has let go. Matthew Tkachuk covered up and took zero penalties while Zack Kassian punched him in 2020, and Kassian’s attack was scored as a double minor for roughing plus a misconduct, with no fighting major at all, before Player Safety suspended him two games as the aggressor. Jordan Nolan kept his gloves on against Tom Sestito in 2014 and took nothing. Nick Cousins curled up under Erik Gudbranson in 2023 and took nothing, while Gudbranson took 27 penalty minutes and a one-game suspension. The line the officials have drawn before is participation, and it is not a high bar. Helleson cleared it, and still walked away with two minutes.

What happens next?

Player Safety, and then Vancouver. An aggressor designation is recorded for statistical and suspension purposes under Rule 46.2, so the league may still take a look at Podkolzin. The recent range is wide: Ottavainen and Douglas were fined this calendar year, and the heavyweight precedent belongs to an Oiler, Darnell Nurse, suspended three games in 2016 for jumping San Jose’s Roman Polak, who never dropped his gloves, in retaliation for a hit on a teammate. The league also went back through the paperwork after the final horn and gave Podkolzin his full suite of earned penalties, increasing the penalty totals for the game, Scouting the Refs reports.

The Oilers host Vancouver on Saturday, and the question that follows them into it is the one McDavid asked about the net: whether the league treats a hit into the goal frame the way it treats a hit into the boards. Ekman-Larsson left a game on a Lauzon hit that drew no penalty at all, then practised a day later, so the no-call on Helleson’s hit is not the outlier here. The outlier is the one-man fight, and whether Player Safety thinks the aggressor tag is the end of it or the start of something more.