With 11 games to go in the regular season schedule and no hope of the playoffs, there isn’t much to look forward to on the ice these days. Instead, we look to the future, hoping desperately that brighter days are ahead.

Among the many changes coming this off-season is the rumored return of Anton Rodin, the Canucks’ second round draft choice in 2009 who fled across the Atlantic following a couple of injury riddled seasons in the AHL. This year though, he was the SHL’s most valuable player, and that is no small feat.

It’s been common knowledge for a while that the Canucks are interested in bringing Rodin back into the fold next season, and now it is being reported that a deal between the two parties is getting close to completion.

I don’t know to what extent Tony Gallagher’s sources can be trusted these days, but this development doesn’t seem the least bit far fetched. Rodin has been a popular topic all season long, what with his dominant season in one of Europe’s strongest leagues, and Benning has been prodded on the topic numerous times.

Unfortunately, Rodin’s season was cut short due to a nasty ligament tear. This prevented the Canucks from seeing him play in person this season, but it won’t diminish their interest in bringing him over. Nor did it stop Rodin from receiving the prestigious Gold Helmet award as the league MVP as voted by the players (like Daniel Sedin’s Ten Lindsay Trophy).

Rodin led the SHL in scoring for much of the season until his injury ended his campaign after 33 games. He still managed 37 points (16 goals, 21 assists) in those games, and although he tumbled to 15th in the league in points, his 1.12 points per game remained tops in the SHL.

About 33 per cent of statistically comparable players were regular NHLers at some point, but when we’re talking about a 25-year old like Rodin, further investigation is requried (there’s no temporal order in this metric – NHL games could have occurred before or after the comparable SHL season).

Ville Peltonen, a San Jose Sharks draft pick whose 1997-98 SHL season is within the similarity threshold of Rodin’s current season, jumped back and forth between the NHL and European leagues several times. After two abbreviated season in the NHL for the team that drafted him, Peltonen fled to Sweden in 1997 and put up 51 points in 45 games. He returned the following season and played for Nashville (San Jose traded his rights in the 1998 off-season). After a few underwhelming seasons, he fled across the pond again, this time splitting five seasons between Finland and Switzerland. He then returned to the NHL again, playing three okay seasons with the Panthers before heading back to Europe once again.

Another example is Espen Knutsen, who, besides having an awesome name, played a season for the Mighty Ducks in 1997-98, then spent two productive years in the SHL before returning to North America to play with the Blue Jackets. He had a couple of decent years before petering out and headed back to Europe.

My apologies that these examples are a bit pessimistic, but you could at least take solace in the fact that neither Peltonen nor Knutsen won any Gold Helmets, right? A number of NHL players have previously won this award, including Jakob Silfverberg, Mats Zuccarello, Henrik Lundqvist and Peter Forsberg, which is much better company.

Rodin last played in North America in 2012-13, playing for the AHL’s Chicago Wolves for a pair of seasons before heading back to Sweden. He had an acceptable rookie campaign, scoring 10 goals and 27 points in 62 games at the age of 21. His second season was less impressive, scoring four goals and 14 points in 49 games in 2012-13. It’s important to note though that he was dealing with his fair share of injury issues in both seasons.

The hope is that Rodin has developed some missing elements of his game during his three seasons in Brynäs. He is evidently stronger than he was when he left, and the skill that he always possessed hasn’t left him.

As for the question of where Rodin will fit into the Canucks next season, he’s likely to be a middle six winger that could chip in a modest amount of offense. The fact that the Canucks were intent on bringing him back next season was apparently a factor in the Hunter Shinkaruk trade, as they supposedly felt there was some redundancy in their roles.

Personally, I’m hoping that the Canucks bring Rodin over and he vastly exceeds expectations. I hope he sticks with the team for a decade and starts putting up massive numbers. I have no reason to believe that this will occur, it’s just that the Canucks have been led in scoring by Swedes for 18 straight seasons and I’m terrified of change.

Expectations for Rodin will eventually have to be tempered to reality, but we’ll worry about that once we actually know he’s headed to North America.