The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of Ivan Provorov’s Season With The Columbus Blue Jackets

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Of Ivan Provorov’s Season With The Columbus Blue Jackets

the Blue Jackets needed to get bigger tougher healthier more experienced on the blue line was Ivan Pro the right choice to do all of those things we’re going to discuss on today’s locked on Blue Jackets you’re locked on Blue Jacket your daily podcast on the Columbus Blue Jackets part of the locked on podcast Network your team everyday Hello I’m welcome to lock on Blue Jacket Part of the lockon podcast Network your team every day I am as always your host Jay froster here to give you the Good the Bad and the Ugly about your favorite team and mine the Columbus Blue Jackets before we get started I want to thank everyone for making this your first listen of the day every single day lock on Blue Jackets is free and available on all podcast platforms and over on YouTube I’ll have to let you know that today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel make every moment more because right now new customers are getting $150 in bonus beds with any winning $5 bet visit fanduel.com locked on to get started so we’ll talking about I proov today h The Good the Bad the Ugly of of his season I want to talk a little bit about kind of looking back at the trade I want to look at his season as a whole his contract like will he be a blue jacket in October if not where is he moved to what will he be moved for like there’s there’s a whole bunch of again moving Parts with proov um and I guess let’s let’s start up front let’s be honest I didn’t love this this trade when it happened uh I didn’t love the decision to to clog up the Blue Line even more and you know having looked at how this season has unfolded and some of the other moves that caline had made over last summer like it you know the the cson move the Babcock move the you know all kinds of all kinds of different things it felt like he knew that his he was on the hot seat and he made a bunch of not panic moves necessarily but he made a lot of moves that thought that he could win now because he was getting impatient he wanted to speed up the rebuild and I don’t know that it well it obviously didn’t work because the Blue Jackets were arguably maybe even worse than they were last season not quite they probably were on part with where they were last season but like they certainly didn’t take enough steps forward to to justify you know trading assets for I Pro I think they traded a a third round pick for Damon seon we’ll talk about Damon tson in a future episode that’s not about him but like I could have dealt with like like one of those two trades I would have been like okay fine um but here we are they they did both of them and uh I just I don’t I truly don’t get why they decided to to make this I mean I do understand why they decided to make this trade but like I am proov for me feels like a less good Zach warsky and I know that one of the things that the blue jacket has struggled with over the past handful of seasons has been keeping players healthy and keeping defenseman specifically healthy you know they’ve just gone through the uh the Ryan Murray the adab boquist can’t seem to stay healthy Zach reny’s had um serious injuries in the past handful of seasons like I get it you want to bring someone in that um before with was before he was with the Blue Jackets he missed like four games total when he was with the Flyers over like seven seasons and he was the only blue jacket to play all 82 games this season I believe so like I get it that you know he’s he’s nothing if not healthy um the problem was and I think again this comes down to weaknesses on his part and also weaknesses on the coaching staff is that he was just so badly used this season that it really exacerbated all of like the weaknesses in his game you know like there was there was a world in which I Pro Rob’s ice time was not we’re going to put him on the P the penalty kill for a million minutes we’re going to put him on the top pairing um and again play him a million minutes we’re going to play him in his own zone for a million minutes like it’s because he just doesn’t he’s just not suited to it and you saw flashes of like like I think his his breakout like his first pass out of the zone is fine but his defending is just not good enough his defending on the rush was horrific um and for some reason he just kind of kept being put into these situations that just were not suited to his game he was great offensively uh second on the team in in scoring by a defenseman I believe only zachari had more points than him H proov had 32 points in 82 games uh which was not like his best offensive season but it also wasn’t wasn’t his worst um his his career high is 41 points um but this was His Highest total since the 2019 2020 season when he had 36 points with the Flyers so like offensively he was he was fine he was a perfectly acceptable offensive defenseman um but the the issues I had were with the defense and the fact that again he played a billion minutes um so I wanted to go back and before I kind of really dig into proov Gamers I wanted to look at the trade and what the Blue Jackets sent we um so it was a three-way trade um so the Flyers traded Kevin Canon Hayden Hodson and Ian proov to the LA Kings in return for Cal Peterson Shawn Walker uh Helga gr and a second round pick they then traded uh a sorry they then from the Blue Jackets got a first round pick which turned into Oliver Bon who had a really good season with the London Knights this year 22nd overall and a conditional second round pick uh which they won’t we won’t know until after the Blue Jackets are are done with the first day of the draft whether they’re keeping it or they’re sending it next year so the Blue Jackets might not the Blue Jackets might pick fourth overall and then they might not pick again until like the start of the third round if they decide that they want to give up the just give up the second round pick now and and get it over and done with um and then the bullet jackets acquired from the LA uh I proov at uh 70% I believe um the king retained 30% of his contract for the next two seasons so gave up a first round pick and a second round pick for I proov which like that to me feels like a little bit of an overpay um if that SEC you know if that first if that second round pick becomes you know like if they kick it to the curb next year and it becomes like 40 overall 50 overall like fine like it feels a little bit better but to me it felt like paying assets for something that you didn’t need at the time and trade that really hasn’t worked out um which is frustrating obviously a lot of these trade analyses are kind of in hindsight you know oh well if we’d known he wasn’t going to be very good defensively then maybe we wouldn’t have traded for him but here we are he’s he’s on the team he’ll probably be on the team in October although I kind of wish he wouldn’t be um and I just I don’t think that the trade was I just don’t think that the trade was was all that great especially if you know they came out and they they immediately acquired Damon Severson to then resign Damon Severson for the next eight years despite the fact that he’s 20 he was 28 at the time so they have him until he’s 36 um they already haven’t got a ton of cap space because like we talked about this in uh Friday’s episode I want to say where they have what $24 million to get Patrick l back into the into the lineup and then also give new contract to chikov marchenko Singer Neil Ander Kent John son texier and Jake bean and like there’s just not enough room for all of that but if they can manage to shift proov contract that gives them an extra four and a half just over four and a half million if they don’t have to retain on it but we’ll talk about that in uh in a second so like a bitly I feel like and like I’m I’m okay with with saying this like I was kind of not biased against proov before he even started but I he was certainly not like he started on a downward he had he he started on you know the very bottom of of my expectations and so like in in one way I had no expectations for him so like how did he disappoint but on the other hand like yep no I was right I this trade wasn’t great the the the play style doesn’t match and now who we are um I want to dig into kind of his play style a little bit more and how kind of we saw from him like like I said flashes of good things but mostly it was him being put in situations that he was not suited to to play in so we’re going to talk about that in just a little bit here on lock on Blue Jackets before we do that though I’ve got to tell you all about FanDuel because it’s winner take all time in the NBA and the NHL FanDuel is giving you a shot to bring home a big win of your own right now new customers are going to get $150 in bonus Bets with any winning $5 bet it’s 150 bucks that you can use to bet on spreads money line player props and more so like honestly my advice go to fanduel.com find the heaviest fa that you can whether that’s the Denver Nuggets winning uh in in 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Brindley the D Malatesta that played for you know like 25 minutes to get like 25 minutes max um and if you look at like the percentage of shift starts in the defensive Zone the two defenseman that started in the defensive Zone the most were Erica Branson which makes sense is more of a shutdown guy and I proov who is decidedly not a shutdown guy on the flip side when you go to the percentage of shift starts in the offensive zone for defenseman uh he was I believe looking at again uh minimum 100 minutes so not taking into account uh players that again only played for like five minutes uh boquist wensky Urich Severson blankenberg all ahead of him uh bra only started 99.2% of his shifts in the offensive zone so what that means is he was only on the ice for under 10% of the faceoffs that took place in the offensive zone that to me feels like extreme mismanagement of ostensibly one of the better offensive defenseman on the team you know and the blue jacket struggled with with um offense from the D this season like massively um you know and this is a team that should be providing more but of the of the defenseman like rensky great 57 points in 70 games proov 32 points in 82 games cson 28 points in 67 games gab Branson 26 points in 78 games uh Bean 13 points in 72 games and boquist uh 10 points in 35 games and those were your kind of top 10 your top six scoring defenseman um David J also had 10 points in in 43 games so like and then if you go to goals like they just weren’t getting any scoring from the defenseman like again Zack rensky led the way 11 goals uh Damon senson nine goals proov five goals Bean four goals um Branson also had six goals like they just weren’t getting scoring from the defenseman and that feels like to me something that proov specifically could have helped out on like zeny should have had 20 goals this season he was shooting at a catastrophically low shooting percentage for most of the season um but proov was shooting at around about his about a percent like 1.2% below his career average um and scored like the fewest goals of his entire career like he he scored six goals in his rookie season and six goals last season with the Flyers he only scored five this season with the Blue Jackets so like and he was shooting at like basically the same he’s been shooting at his entire career like there was one there was like a couple of outliers he was shooting at over 8% in years that had 13 and 17 goals but like the dude knows how to score and it’s frustrating to me that he wasn’t ever really put in a position to use that offense um I want to try and if I can pull up um the the power play which again I the power play was miserable this season but of the Apparently only four defenseman played more than 25 minutes on the power play this season warsky boquist Pro and cson uh I proov played oh I closed it down God damn it um I proov played um basically no playoff time no um no power play time which again so frustrating because he is a a very good power play guy he’s a very good uh and I talked about this with um I talked about this with um Rachel T of of locked on Flyers he okay so we played like the second most minutes of the defense on the team so we played 122 121 minutes um but he was on that second unit a lot and that second unit just wasn’t getting the Reps it wasn’t getting anything like he uh 24% of the shift starts in the offensive zone on the power play belong to Ian proov compare that to 65% with Zach ransky and partially that’s because Pro was on the second power play unit and so like that typically starts on the Fly um I feel like it’s pretty rare for the uh unit to shift after a a stoppage in play mid Power Play Still happens but it just felt like they they could have they could have used that offense they could have used that shot and they just they just decided they just decided not to six Power Play points all season in 82 games um he was expected to score 1.2 goals scored zero um and just I don’t know I feel like he could have been used so much more efficiently than he actually was which again we go back to coaching they decided that Ian prra was going to be going to be a penalty killer and nothing anyone said was going to change that like he played the second most power power penalty kill minutes on the team by a minute Eric Branson played 218 Pro played 2117 like that was their top penalty kill unit and it frustrates me to no end like I don’t like if that had been for me I would have literally just taken proov off the penalty kill and put him on the power play and like just that’s what I would have done and we would have probably like I’d probably talking about him a lot more positively in that case and so like is that maybe that’s unfair to proov himself for for like for judging him for saying hey why weren’t you on the power play like it’s not his fault he wasn’t going to be like hey I want to play on the power play more I don’t want to play on penalty kill he’s goingon to give the ice he’s gonna take the ice time that the coach gives him you know but it just felt like he didn’t help himself by playing the way that he did even though that was the ice time that was given to him which maybe doesn’t make a lot of sense but I cannot count how many times I was watching the game and there would be a goal and there would be someone who blew coverage and I would look and every single time be like oh it’s Ian Pro ROV of course it’s Ian proov like he just he really struggled in his own Zone this season and it’s extremely frustrating to watch because I do genuinely think that there is like extremely good offense in there he just didn’t ever really get a chance to do anything about it ever like he’s very good at drawing penalties I will give him that uh he I believe was second on the team in defense um oh here’s a fun startat that we’ll we’ll probably talk about in a little bit more detail but we talk about at a boquist he drew eight penal he drew four penalties this season um and didn’t take any of his own so good job him but like and again proov was third on the team in blocking shots he shouldn’t be blocking shots he just shouldn’t that’s not that’s not a player that I want to be blocking shots you know um he gave the puck away a lot in the defensive Zone he just wasn’t really he just wasn’t very good in his own Zone which is frustrating because he was really good in the offensive zone and he just wasn’t there ever and I think partially that’s uh coaching Styles I partially that’s that the team wasn’t very good um I will say this I proov played much better when he was playing with a younger defenseman um and I wonder if that’s because that made him play a little bit more kind of conservatively and a little bit more kind of reserved there was much less kind of failing like blowing the zone and just failing to cover he he wasn’t like caught in the offensive zone and like after stupid pinches which I saw a lot from him this season as well and it felt like he was playing a lot more of a restrained game when he was playing with someone like David Urich I likeed that I like that combo a lot I think because it gave Ur a chance to kind of Step Up and and try more things because proov stepped back a little bit when he was playing with guys like Severson or you know he played with Ganson for for parts of the Season like those were kind of the the C proov pairing was fine it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be the proov G Branson pairing was an active disaster because neither of them were fast enough to get back in time but proov just kept on acting like his defense partner would handle everything and everything would be fine you know so that’s that’s kind of the that was the the big frustration for me with proov was that FY was never in the right place at the right time but I don’t know how much of that is attributed to like his hockey sense and how much of it is just that he was put into positions where like no one was going to succeed uh or no one that had his kind of toolkit was going to succeed you know it’s like it would be like expecting and I’m not comparing these two players at all but it would be like expecting Eric Carlson to suddenly become an extremely competent penalty killer despite the fact that he is a very obviously a defense an offensive defenseman you know and I’m not saying that Carson and pro are comp comparable players at all but that’s kind of that’s kind of how I feel about it is if you have an offensive defenseman and this is kind of the the stuff that we saw with Patrick l last season with Brad lson was we really want Patrick l to be a 2 foot player and we want him to be a power forward and like no he’s a goal scorer let the man score goals and I kind of feel the same about Pro ra of like that’s an offensive defenseman let him do that but here we are um we’re going to take another quick break and then I want to take a look at how like will he be here in October should he be here in October will he get moved at the draft should he get moved at the draft what kind of return could the Blue Jackets expect you know things like that so we’re going to take a quick break and we’ll talk about that in just a second here on lock on Blue Jackets hello and welcome to lock on Blue Jackets uh or welcome back to locked on blue jacket I should say uh because presumably you have been here the whole time we’re talking about proov today uh and I want to talk about kind of his future on the team uh and then I suppose I’ve got to give him a letter grade at the end of it but we we’ll start off with like is this a piece that the Blue Jackets are going to look to trade at the draft and I think yes honestly I think this is potentially going to be a piece that doesn’t move until the new GM is in place but it really depends on what the new GM again what does the new GM think of proov what does the new GM think of the the salary cap situation because like if you can move all of Prov Rob’s contract that’s like over four and a half million that you get to resign the young players you have to fill that spot but I think you know I think David Urich should get a fulltime NHL job next season I think D pook should be challenging I think um if Adam Bas can stay healthy he’s there like um I think Jake should get a nice long look at um a like not necessarily a full-time NHL spot next season but that’s another player that I would like them to take a look at in terms of can can he be an NHL regular going forward you know so it’s not like if they move proov they’ve got no one to fill that ice time but I I don’t know that they’re going to be able to move that entire contract you know do you retain 50% just sit that two and a half million on the on the box um and and deal with that when when it comes to it like I think you’ll probably get more back in the trade but I guess that depends on like what do you value in this trade are you trading this just to get his contract off the books in which case you’ll probably accept less or do you think that you can potentially trade into the end of the first round start of the second round you know and then you can give Philadelphia that second round pick get rid of that you’ve got already got a you’ve got a fresh second round pick you know um it’s a similar thing of like and I think again the proov trade likely depends on what some other moving parts do you know do they want to keep Jake Bean do they want to keep Alexander texier um do they move Elvis’s contract like do they move Adam bst’s contract do they move like again I I I keep saying that Bo Jenner is not getting traded but do they move that contract for more flexibility you know it’s it all kind of comes down to the next GM but I I could definitely see them being in conversations to move proov at the draft I don’t know like where he would go I don’t know what they would get back for him but like I think if you retain 50% of proov then you could probably get like a late first slash early to midc like if you could get like between 30 and 40 overall for proov and youve retained 50% I I I say yes immediately and then it’s okay so what do I what do I what do you want for me to not retain you know do you is it a third round pick is it is it a fourth round pick conditional for like that becomes a third round pick if if the team makes the the the final or makes the playoffs or you know whatever anything like that you know do you do you take a third round pick to just get rid of Ian proov contract like I might I might take a fourth round pick to get rid of Ivan brov’s contract we’ll see um but that’s kind of that’s kind of where I’m at I also could see them start the seesar with him still around and if the bluejs don’t challenge for the Playoffs next season which I’m I’m expecting them to be more competitive than this season but I’m not expecting a playoff spot from this team next year um so I’m tempering my expectations and if they make the playoffs great if not then I would be disappointed uh but is he a deadline candidate to be moved then possibly that’s honestly if I had to put money on it that would be when I say when I think he gets moved and then there’s less worry about having to retain for the rest of the season you’re likely to get more because trade deadline picks trade trade deadline moves I feel like always get more than draft moves so again really depends on the new GM coming in whoever it is what he thinks what he wants to keep who he wants to keep whether he wants to burn the entire team to the ground and start from scratch who knows but I could I could see proov moving at the draft I could also see them keeping hold of him and you know and he provides a little bit of insurance in in case for example dinuk is not ready to be a top four defenseman in the NHL which he very well might not be he might need some seasoning in the NHL you know we won’t know until he he looks NHL ready last Camp he’s just had a monster season with mraw he’s going to the Memorial Cup just want the MVP of the playoffs the WHL but development isn’t linear especially for baby defenseman so I can see them keeping Pro around as insurance if any of their young defensemen are not quite ready or if they decide to move on from Jake Bean or boquist or whoever you know like lots of moving part um all this to say I would move proov but I don’t know that the team will uh in terms of like his his overall grade we we’ll finish up with that like honestly I’m giving him a c uh maybe a C+ I think he was he was fine offensively kind of a disaster defensively but again not entirely his fault because he was put in situations that were not entirely of his own making and sometimes sometimes he got burnt because he made stupid decisions or he like mentally checked out like I saw a hand of goals this season where he just like threw the puck away in his own Zone and then didn’t do anything and then just skated toward the bench and the the the tiing goal or the game-winning goal or whatever was was scored or like you know so he made a bunch of stupid decisions but he also was not put in the best position to succeed by the coaching staff so I I’m I’m fine with that C+ it’s maybe a little bit harsh but that’s it’s my podcast and that’s the grade I’m giving him so if you disagree I’m sure you I’ll hear about it in the comments comments uh but that’s all I’ve got for you today uh tomorrow we’ve got another Prospect profile with Sebastian high of lockal Prospect and Dober Prospect we’re talking about yigo chernishov who is a very interesting Prospect and we also talk a little bit about uh Gavin Brindley who is currently tearing it up at the world champion not tearing it up he scored a goal today as of the time of recording this I’m recording this on Sunday for for people who are interested in that kind of look behind the curtain but talk a little bit about Prospect news uh just in General we talk about um you got chernov who’s a very interesting prospect that probably won’t be on Blue Jackets radar but I want to talk about him anyway for a bunch of reasons that’s tomorrow’s episode thank you for listening to this episode for making it your first listen of the day every single day Lo blue jacket is free and available on all podcast platforms we’re over on YouTube and uh on SiriusXM if you uh want to get in touch I’m on Twitter _ Jacob Foster J KOB the shows at lore Blue Jackets on Twitter and over on Instagram the you can email us at lockon Blue Jackets gmail.com thank you once again for listening for being in everyday you guys are great even though it’s the the depths of the offseason and nothing interesting has happened in like a month and a half you guys are still turning up and I appreciate that until tomorrow make sure you stay locked on

Ivan Provorov had an up and down season for the Blue Jackets, was the trade worth it in the end? What were the good things about his season? Is he a trade piece this summer?

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