SHAWNIGAN LAKE — Cole Cassels wrapped up an excellent junior hockey career, leading his Oshawa Generals to a Memorial Cup title at the end of May.

But winning the Canadian Hockey League’s championship tournament — and having his season end so late — put Cassels on a tight time frame, as far as his summer training goes, to prepare for his first season as a professional.

The versatile centre soldiered on with an abdominal injury picked up in December, and he was still unable to get back on skates at this week’s Canucks’ development camp at Shawnigan Lake School.

Cassels, 20, clearly inherited the hockey player’s pain-ignoring gene from his dad — one-time Canucks centre Andrew Cassels, who piled himself into a car in Columbus a day after hip replacement surgery so he could be driven 20 hours to Quebec City to see his son’s team win the Memorial Cup at the end of May.

Cassels doesn’t regret playing through the injury, which is deemed to not require surgery. If he’d shut it down for an extended period, the Generals would have been missing one of their key players.

“I knew it wasn’t getting worse,” said Cassels. “It was just how much I could keep up with the pain. It’s worth it to win a Memorial Cup.”

The injury occurred when Cassels — who was born in Hartford when his dad was playing for the Whalers — was attending the U.S. world junior team camp last December.

“It just kept nagging and it kept up right through the Memorial Cup,” he said. “I was putting a lot of icing on it. I could feel it the most doing one-timers. When I’d step on the ice after a couple days off I could feel it, but once I got moving around, it wasn’t that bad.”

Cassels hasn’t skated since the Memorial Cup, but is rehabbing and starting to lift weights again. He hopes to get back on the ice by the beginning of August. That gives him just over a month to get ready for the Canucks prospects tournament in Penticton.

“I think it’s manageable,” said Cassels. “Obviously, I’d rather get to 100 per cent than start working at 80 and make it worse, and start all over from scratch in August. I’m getting cleared now for certain things and the rehab is progressing.

“There’s still plenty of time. There’s two-and-a-half months until the preseason starts and about two months until main camp, so I think that’s enough time. I’ve maintained my weight so I think it’s enough time to put strength back on.

“I feel a lot better now. I don’t feel it as much. I’m not going to push it, so probably it’ll be another three weeks or so (to get back on the ice) to be 100 per cent.”

Canucks GM Jim Benning believes Cassels will be ready for training camp, but acknowledges that abdominal injuries can be tricky to predict.

“With those types of injuries you don’t know for sure, but he’s progressing well,” said Benning. “Everything right now looks to be on schedule. He came in at the end of the year and we did all the exams and we think we’ve got it pinpointed. He’s doing physical therapy and he’s doing better and better every day.