There’s a lot in front of Wolves forward Cody Glass.
After his campaign with the Portland Winterhawks of the junior Western Hockey League ended, the Golden Knights assigned Glass to the Wolves. Glass only played in 38 regular-season games with Portland thanks to a left knee injury in January and is working to get back up to speed. He’s doing that while acclimating to a new team, one that led the Western Conference in points and opened the Calder Cup playoffs with a 5-1 loss to Grand Rapids on Friday night.
Taken sixth overall in 2017, Glass was Vegas’ first-ever draft pick and is perhaps the top prospect remaining in an organization that’s traded assets to win now. Before suffering the injury this winter, Glass had been highly productive with 69 goals and 196 points over the previous two seasons.
Because of his place in the Vegas future and his lofty draft slot, Glass knows there will be people watching closely to see what he can do a level above the WHL.
“I think there’s a lot of people judging me. If I have a bad game or have a good game, there’s always going to be those people saying stuff about me,” Glass said. “I try not to worry about it. Obviously, I know what I’m capable of.”
And oh, Glass also needs adjust to living with teammate Jake Leschyshyn in a new city after being welcomed by a billet (host) in Portland. That means trips to the grocery store and getting items for their apartment.
“It’s a little bit different, but it’s also a nice change,” Glass said. “More independent and it really shows how mature you are and how you treat yourself.”
So far, the Wolves have few complaints about Glass and his maturity.
Glass, who turned 20 on April 1, had three goals and two assists in six regular-season games with the Wolves in his first exposure to professional hockey games. He’s seen time on the power play and gained trust from the Wolves coaching staff, which was important to Glass.
“Once you get that, that’s when you start to play with more confidence within your game and start doing more things with the puck while having their trust and them putting you in certain situations on the ice,” Glass said. “Once I got their trust, I feel like that’s when I got more comfortable.”
Not every player can get comfortable on the fly when they jump from juniors to the AHL at the end of the season. Wolves defenseman Nicolas Hague did it last season, and Glass is doing it now.
“Some individuals struggle with it. Others kind of excel,” Wolves coach Rocky Thompson said. “To me, it always takes about 5-7 games to kind of feel your way and then the players that can do it, you know in that little time span that they can actually make the next step in a relatively short period of time.”
