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Canuck draft pick Anton Cederholm, a Winterhawks defenceman, tussles with Giants centre Carter Popoff. (Province Files.)
Vancouver Canucks defence prospect Anton Cederholm is slated to return to Sweden for his high school graduation in June and hopes to bring along championship hardware to show off.
“That’s the goal,” the Portland Winterhawks blueliner chuckled earlier this week, in the midst of taking a break from preparing for the best-of-seven WHL Western Conference final against the Kelowna Rockets.
Portland has advanced to their conference championship for a fourth straight spring and WHL rookie Cederholm, a 2013 fifth-round pick of the Canucks out of Helsingborg, Sweden, has been a key complimentary piece along the way.
Cederholm, who turned 19 in February, has been paired largely with star blueliner Derrick Pouliot, providing back up for Pouliot to push forward.
Cederholm moves well for a 6-foot-2, 214-pound guy. He plays physical. He has better skills than his offensive numbers, but he’s still a stay-at-home, penalty-kill, reliable type. If he keeps progressing, he has chance to be a No. 5 or No. 6 guy at the pro level.
So far in the playoffs, he has one goal, two points, a plus-four rating and six penalty minutes in nine games. In the regular season, he had put up four goals, 16 points, a plus-42 rating and 95 penalty minutes in 71 games.
“The longer we play, the better chance I have to show Vancouver what I have to offer,” said Cederholm.
This series offers up one of the most anticipated playoff match-ups in the WHL in recent memory. Consider that the Rockets (57-11-0-4) put together the best record in the circuit over the past five years, while Portland (54-13-2-3) had the fourth-best performance during that span.
The top-seeded Rockets dispatched the No. 8 Tri-City Americans in five games and then the No. 4 Seattle Thunderbirds in four games to advance, while the No. 2 Winterhawks got past the No. 7 Vancouver Giants in four and the No. 3 Victoria Royals in five.
Kelowna won all four meeting between the teams in the regular season, but the last came on Jan. 2, when Portland was missing Pouliot, defenceman Mathew Dumba and forwards Nic Petan and Taylor Leier to the Canadian world junior team.
Portland finished the regular season on a 28-1-0-0 run.
The Rockets also received six goals and 10 points in the four games from forward Myles Bell, and he hasn’t played since the Tri-City series due to a lower body injury. Kelowna coach Ryan Huska would only say that Bell, an overager who had 42 goals in the regular season, is being re-evaluated by team medical staff daily.
“They can come at you in a lot of different ways,” Huska said of the Winterhawks, who are coached by former Canuck assistant Mike Johnston. “They’re a real challenge to handle, and not only in our zone. They check better than people give them credit for and, with the way they move the puck, they don’t spend a lot of time in their own zone.”
The Western champion meets the Eastern titleholder for the WHL championship and a spot in the Memorial Cup national tournament, which goes May 16-25 and is hosted by the OHL’s London Knights.
The No. 6 Kootenay Ice were meeting the No. 4 Medicine Hat Tigers Wednesday in a Game 7 for a right to battle the No. 1 Edmonton Oil Kings in the Eastern finale.
Cederholm, who was the 60th overall pick by the Winterhawks in this season’s CHL Import Draft, had planned to take traditional school in Portland initially, but found that it was easier to finish his Swedish studies online.
“There’s been some tough periods,” he explained.
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