Canucks Army Prospect Profiles #4: Anton Rodin

There’s so much I could say about Anton Rodin. I’m almost having a hard time figuring where to start. His development path has been an atypical one, to say the least. So much so, in fact, that it’s debatable whether or not he even qualifies as a “prospect”.

He’ll turn 26 midway through the 2015-16 season, and should theoretically be in the prime of his career. He’s still eligible for the Calder trophy, and he’s still an unknown commodity, however, which made him a prime candidate for the top-end of our prospect rankings. 

Rodin offers an enticing package for an NHL forward, possessing speed and puck-handling skill in spades. He’s also shown a propensity for providing offence at lower levels, which makes him attractive to a team that was so anaemic offensively last season.

Due to his waiver eligibility and the Canucks’ need for goal-scoring and playmaking ability, no prospect in the Canucks’ system stands to make an immediate impact the way Rodin can.There’s certainly room in the Canucks’ middle six for a player with Rodin’s skill-set, and Jim Benning has already said he sees Rodin as an option on the power play, and that he’ll likely begin next season on the team’s third line.

The last time CA readers were treated to a profile on Anton Rodin was in 2012, when he was deemed the 12th best prospect in the Canucks’ system. A lot has changed since then, so Rodin checks in at number four on what will inevitably be his last appearance on our consensus rankings. 

Rodin has been an offensive force for much of his career. He was drafted 52nd overall by the Canucks in 2009, hot off the heels of an impressive 29-goal, 55-point campaign in Sweden’s U20 league. Rodin’s performance is 19th all-time in raw point totals in SuperElit history, ahead of names like Lars Eller, Carl Hagelin, and Frans Nielsen — impressive company, to be sure.

After two respectable seasons in the SHL, Rodin made the trek over to North America, to play for then-Canucks AHL affiliate the Chicago Wolves. A lot of digital ink has been spilled regarding Rodin’s unsuccessful stint on this side of the water, but it’s safe to assume the cards were stacked against him from the beginning.

He battled a shoulder injury that left him unable to shoot for much of his time in Chicago, and he was unable to become a fixture in the Wolves’ top-six. When Rodin was not injured, he was still left competing with a veteran-heavy depth chart on the right-hand side that included Mark Mancari, Darren Heydar, Andrew Gordon, and later, Zack Kassian. Rodin was the beneficiary of relatively favourable deployment from Wolves’ coach Craig MacTavish during his time there, however, so it’s difficult to see those two seasons as anything but forgettable.

Then Canucks General Manager Mike Gillis clearly believed there was still gas in the tank, however, and elected to tender Rodin a qualifying offer in the summer of 2013. Rodin chose to return to Sweden, but in hindsight, the past administration’s decision to retain his rights is looking like a deft one. In the three years Rodin played in the SHL after returning from North America, he scored at a pace of 0.835 PPG. His scoring increased incrementally with each passing season, culminating in a sublime 2015-16 campaign where he scored 37 points in just 33 games, en route to winning the Guldhjälmen, the SHL’s equivalent of the Hart Trophy. 

Trying to unpack just what exactly the Canucks have in Rodin has proven to be a difficult task, mainly because there just haven’t been many examples of players who have been as good as Rodin has in Europe, only to completely halt and catch fire upon their appearance at the AHL level. Development wise, Rodin has taken the road less traveled, something that’s reflected in his pGPS% of 28.6%.

pGPS produces only 7 height and scoring-based matches for Anton Rodin. Of those 7 matches, 2 became regular NHLers: Espen Knusten, and Ville Peltonen. Two fine NHLers, to be sure, but perhaps a little disappointing when you consider Rodin’s impressive boxcars from last season.

I’m not entirely sure how much stock to put into Rodin’s matches, however. Age plays a significant role in determining pGPS matches, and any player with an age difference of more than 5 months will be excluded. Based on what we know about development curves, this makes sense when evaluating players in their mid-to-late-teens. It was never really meant to be applied to a player at the relatively advanced age of 26, where an age difference of a year or two begins to make less of a difference in terms of development. 

For what it’s worth, none of Rodin’s statistical matches could best his scoring pace from 2015-16. Knusten comes close, but there have been no players at Rodin’s height and age that have scored at the pace he did in his most recent campaign. When viewed through a more traditional lens, Rodin’s goal and assist output stacks up nicely against recent successful SHL free agent signings like Mats Zuccarello and Carl Soderberg. 

I’ve kept a very close eye on Rodin ever since his resurgence was 

 and frankly, everything I’ve seen from him has left me impressed. He is, by SHL standards, a truly elite forward, who’s been the best player on the ice upon multiple viewings. He possesses excellent speed and acceleration, which he was able to use to his advantage by springing himself on breakaways on many occasions. His stick-handling is equally impressive, as he was consistently able to maintain possession of the puck across all three zones, as well as possessing the ability to break up plays and send them in the other direction. Rodin’s ability to handle the more physical aspects of the game has also improved immensely in the past few years, and he can now score goals from the dirty areas in a way that eluded him in his early twenties.

That’s not to say that Rodin is a sure thing. There’s reason to believe Rodin’s performance was somewhat percentage-driven. Rodin was converting on just over 17.5% of his shots this past season, the highest mark of his career. He also suffered a grisly lower-body injury, severing a tendon in his knee and effectively ending his season with Brynas, something that won’t be easy to bounce back from. He’s also a tad on the small side at 5’11”, and he’ll have prove he can stand up to the rigours of an NHL season the way diminutive forwards do. 

There’s also some concern about whether or not Rodin can pull off the type of moves that made him a success in Sweden on the smaller ice surface. Although, there has been some precedent for it, albeit inconsistently. In this clip from his time with the Chicago Wolves, Rodin dances around 4 opposing players in tight to set up his defenceman for a nice shot from the point:  

Rodin has all the tools to be an effective forward at this level, and pGPS shows us that there’s precedent for similar players to achieve success in the NHL. Unfortunately, there’s only so much we can gleam from statistics and watching him at lower levels. I believe he can be solid middle-six forward with skill, something the Canucks have sorely lacked for some time now, and it’s safe to assume that the Canucks’ brain trust believes he can, too. We’ll never really know what he’s capable of until he hits the ice, though, so for now, we’re left guessing.