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This is how good Anton Rodin was last year:

His season ended in January and he was still the Swedish Elite League’s MVP.

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And no, there weren’t any fan-fed online shenanigans. It was the players who voted.

“It was a good year,” said Rodin humbly, with this aww-shucks, wh0-me? smile. “It was very flattering.”

On Wednesday, Rodin was preparing to play his first hockey in eight months. A freak skate-cut accident wiped out his season when his knee was stepped on in January.

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

He was in the midst of the best season of his life. He was getting consideration for the national team. The Canucks, notably GM Jim Benning, were preparing to travel to Sweden to see him play.

The points Rodin was piling up early in the year caught the Canucks’ attention, big time. The front office wanted to see firsthand how the 2009 second-round draft pick was doing it.

They wanted to scout his strength, his jam. Was he playing the type of game that could work here, in a town thirsty for offence?