Kolesar hoping to cap junior career with Mem Cup win

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This article was published 18/05/2017 (3362 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Keegan Kolesar is just getting started.

Once a big kid with loads of potential, he’s become a very big man who frightens defencemen as much with his deft scoring touch and playmaking ability as his fearsome physical presence. The 6-2, 223-pound Seattle Thunderbirds right-winger is a nightmare to defend against and he’s likely coming to an NHL rink near you — very soon.

But it wasn’t always hockey for this 20-year-old from Winnipeg.

“I don’t think my parents will ever forgive me for choosing hockey over baseball and football,” said Kolesar with a laugh, during a telephone interview with the Free Press on Thursday afternoon. He and the Thunderbirds are in Windsor, Ont., for the Memorial Cup national junior hockey championship, which begins tonight and wraps up May 28.

“Initially, they only put me in hockey just to stay in shape in the off-season for football and baseball. They’d never have envisioned I’d have played hockey growing up. I told them for so many years I liked hockey more and I slowly, gradually, got it into their minds that hockey’s the sport for me and I was done playing football and baseball,” he said.

Kolesar comes by his athletic influences honestly.

His stepfather, Charles Peterson, a former member of the Winnipeg Goldeyes and currently a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals, had a 14-year playing career in pro baseball. Kolesar’s birth father is K.D. Williams, a linebacker who played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers during a six-year career in the CFL, NFL and World League of American Football.

“They refer to him as a football player on skates, which is really true,” said Keegan’s mom, Corrinne Kolesar. “If he trained (for football), he’d be 250, 260. He can’t lift like that. Most kids have to gain weight, where Keegan eats 42 egg whites a day. During the summer, that’s his diet. Yeah, it’s crazy. He has to stay between 220 and 225 (pounds).”

Kolesar, a third-round (69th overall) selection of the Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2015 NHL Draft, came to the Thunderbirds as a raw prospect in 2013-14. But the refinements he made to his game didn’t do him any good when he showed up at the Blue Jackets’ pre-season rookie camp last fall.

An abdominal problem that had nagged at him off and on for a few years finally became something he couldn’t ignore, and the advice from the NHL’s club’s medical staff was unavoidable.

“I had seven hernias, three in my belly and two in each of my groins,” said Kolesar, who recuperated for six weeks while stationed with Columbus’ AHL farm team in Cleveland. “I knew I had to get that (hernia surgery) done and it took me a while to recover from that. It’s helped me so much and I haven’t had any issues in the second half at all.

“The surgery helped so much with skating and feeling healthy again.”

Hernia surgery has become routine in hockey these days and so is the urge to return before a player has given himself enough time to recover. But Kolesar resisted.

“I’m very, very thankful it happened in Columbus,” said his mother. “Because there were professional athletes he was surrounded by that were his support group, saying, ‘We had this done, you’re in good hands, don’t rush back, we made the mistake of coming back too soon.’”

After returning to the Thunderbirds on Nov. 15, Kolesar struggled to shed the accumulated rust and managed only five goals and five assists in his first 21 games.

Playing on Seattle’s top line with New York Islanders first-rounder Mathew Barzal and Rangers’ second-rounder Ryan Gropp, Kolesar finished with 60 points, including 26 goals, in 54 games. But his biggest impact came late in the campaign and during a post-season run to the franchise’s first WHL title.

In his last 52 games, including 19 playoff starts, Kolesar had 33 goals and 48 assists. He led all WHL playoff performers with 31 points, including 12 goals.

“When I came back it was even tougher because I was a step behind, I wasn’t producing points-wise,” said Kolesar. “I wasn’t playing how I expected to in my 19-year-old year. It took a while to get my feet underneath me but after the Christmas break I really started playing my game and I started putting up points and playing more of a complete game.”

Seattle’s superb second half put the Thunderbirds in the WHL final, where Kolesar scored the tying goal to force overtime and assisted on the winning goal in Game 6 to eliminate the favoured Regina Pats.

All that’s left to cap a dream season would be victory at the Memorial Cup, where the T-birds face the Ontario Hockey League champion Erie Otters in round-robin action Saturday afternoon. The four-team tournament format can be uncomfortable for teams accustomed to a best-of-seven playoff series. Room for error is minimal.

“It’s more, who can play their game best,” said Kolesar. “Who can come out of the gate strong at the start because you only have three games to decide where you go from there. You go 3-0 and you go straight to the finals and that’s what our goal is.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @sawa14