Things are finally starting to look up for Vancouver Canucks prospect Viktor Persson.

It’s been a tough few months for Persson. First, his Swedish J20 season was cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns, then he was one of the final cuts from Sweden’s World Junior team and to top things off, it looks like the WHL is now going through problems starting their season.

Persson was set to join the Kamloops Blazers of the WHL as an international import player for their 2021 season. I spoke with a couple sources around the WHL and they all gave the same answer saying that a lot is up in the air for not only a start date, but potentially the entire season.

After an extremely tough few months for the 19-year-old right shot defenceman, he got some good news earlier this week.

Persson was called up to Brynäs’ SHL team and suited up for them in their Tuesday win over Malmö. Persson didn’t see the ice in the game but just being called up to the SHL team is a big win. He had not seen game action since November 10th and this year of development was beginning to look like a lost year.

He was just beginning to stack up the points for Brynäs at the J20 level before his season was cancelled. It looked like he could have catapulted his way onto the World Junior team that only has one right shot defenceman on their roster in the tournament.

I reached out to Persson to congratulate him on the call-up and he said “Thank you, hopefully I will get some games in soon.”

When I spoke with him after being cut he was very excited about coming over to Kamloops, saying, “I’m really excited to come over and play! We don’t have a date set but hopefully we will have one soon.”

It’s looking like he may not be coming over to British Columbia as early as we predicted with the WHL season in question. Persson wants to get to North America to challenge himself and was prepared to make adjustments to his game to play in a North American league.

The chance to play in the WHL is not off the table just yet but if he were to start getting some minutes at the SHL level then he may not even come over to the Blazers organization this season. We spoke about his goals and he wanted to evaluate where he was at after this season to see if the WHL or SHL was the best option for him in the 2021-22 season. Now that he is an SHL roster player, his professional career path has been sped up.

We will continue to follow this story and I will be checking in with Persson and the Blazers organization to get more info on what’s next for Persson. For now, Brynäs’ will be picking up some new viewers as Vancouver media members will surely be tuning in to see if he gets any SHL ice time.