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“I can’t wait to see their faces when I get drafted,” Cody says. “I just want to show there’s a payoff to all the hard work and all the stuff they’ve dedicated to me. It’s just a little thing I can do to pay them back.”

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Jeff Glass must be doing something right with Matthew and Cody.

Matthew, 21, is a top student at the University of Winnipeg, who will write his Medical College Admission Test this summer and hopes to work toward becoming a doctor at the University of Manitoba.

Cody led the Winterhawks in scoring this season with 32 goals and 94 points in 69 games. The centre’s efforts have him ranked sixth among North American prospects for the NHL draft, his 200-foot game drawing the most attention from the scouts.

But it hasn’t been easy for anyone in the Glass family. Jeff has been raising the boys on his own in West Kildonan since he and his wife divorced in 2010.

Well, not entirely on his own. Until last year, Jeff and the boys lived with his mother, Judy.

“My mom supported us a lot, helped us through it all,” Jeff says. “Me and my boys moved in with my mom after my dad passed away so we could help her out, too. We helped each other out. She helped me keep the kids in hockey.

“It was tough, especially with Cody playing the highest level. It was tough trying to keep up with the registration and all that.”

Judy passed away last August.

Cody was trying out for Team Canada, hoping to play in the Ivan Hlinka tournament in the Czech Republic last summer, and his grandmother went into the hospital when he was away. Cody was devastated when he was cut from the team, but it gave him a chance to come home and say goodbye.

“So, in a way, it was a blessing that he got cut because he was home when she passed,” Jeff says. “If he had been at Ivan Hlinka, he would not have been here.”

Getting cut from the Ivan Hlinka team was not a sign of things to come for Cody.

Since that time, he’s done nothing but blow away scouts, who are impressed with his hockey IQ, soft hands, great vision and excellent puck skills. He rose to sixth in the final NHL Central Scouting Bureau rankings from eighth at mid-term and has been ranked as high as third by some prognosticators.

“If you would have said that last summer with everything that happened …” David says. “To be mentioned in the top-five now is just unbelievable.”