Tyson Kozak named Portland Winterhawks top rookie

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This article was published 18/04/2020 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nobody was more taken aback by the news that Tyson Kozak was the Portland Winterhawks rookie of the year than Tyson Kozak.

The five-foot-11, 160-pound forward from Souris earned the honour on March 31.

“I was very surprised,” Kozak said. “I wasn’t expecting that going into this year. I was expecting to be trying to make the team. To get rookie of the year is awesome.”

Kozak had a five-game taste of the Western Hockey League during the 2018-19 campaign, but in his first full season, Kozak scored 13 goals and added 16 assists, with 15 penalty minutes and a plus-minus rating of plus-27.

He admits it took time to get settled.

“After the Christmas break is when I really started to feel comfortable,” Kozak said. “Going back for the second half is when I felt like I played my best.”

For most of the season, he played centre with wingers Simon Knak and Cross Hanas, but he also saw time on the wing with Jack O’Brien and James Stefan.

“I was always flip-flopping between centre and wing,” Kozak said. “I think they just wanted to give me an opportunity to play with some other guys that I wouldn’t get if I played centre.”

Portland’s approach appeared to work.

Kozak had the first three-point game of his career in an 11-2 victory over fellow Souris product and a Southwest Cougars teammate Cory King and the Moose Jaw Warriors on Feb. 16, and enjoyed his second two-goal of the season on March 4 against the Tri-City Americans. Four nights later he scored again in what proved to be his team’s final game of the season, a 4-1 win over the Victoria Royals.

“I think I definitely improved playing against some of the top players in Western Canada, and being on a team with some great players too pushing me in practice every day,” Kozak said. “It made me a better player all around.”

He said it helped that the Winterhawks were a hard-working bunch. They didn’t just save the competitiveness for their opponents in a season they went 45-11-3-4 to top the Everett Silvertips for first place overall during the regular season.

“When I first came into Portland, I wasn’t expecting how hard they pushed each other in practice and in the gym,” Kozak said. “I think ultimately it made our team a lot better.”

With a late December birthday, Kozak will always be one of the youngest players in his birth-year cohort. And while his game has grown tremendously in Portland, he said there is plenty of room to get better.

“I’m trying to improve on everything,” Kozak said. “There’s always something you can improve on. I want to improve on my speed and my shot most.”

The signs that Kozak’s development was skyrocketing actually came before he even moved west. In his second year in the Manitoba U18 AAA Hockey League, Kozak went from 35 points in 44 games as a 15-year-old rookie to 72 points in 40 games as a 16-year-old.

He expects that his second year in Portland should also go a lot more smoothly with the benefit of his first WHL season behind him.

“I think it will help me a lot,” Kozak said. “I’ll be a lot more comfortable and have a lot more confidence in my game. It should make me a better player having that one year of experience under my belt.”

Kozak said this year’s edition of the Winterhawks was a very close group starting in the pre-season, making his transition to the WHL that much easier. But that closeness, and the fact that Portland would have been one of the league favourites to win it all, made the campaign’s sudden end that much harder to take.

The remainder of the regular season was put on hold on March 12, and eventually called off on March 18. The playoffs and Memorial Cup were officially cancelled on March 23.

“We were all definitely shocked,” Kozak said. “We thought we had a good chance of going deep into the playoffs. It was a tough thing to hear.”

All he can do now is prepare for next season,

With gyms closed and no ice available, Kozak is doing what he can. Fortunately, he was already equipped to do some stuff at home in Souris.

“I have a bunch of weights in my house and I have a net in my backyard with some stuff to shoot on. That’s what I’m doing right now, and going for runs around town.”

Unfortunately, if things hold up with the pandemic as they have so far, he won’t have baseball to turn this summer either. 

Kozak had big plans for the other team sport he plays.

“I was going to play high school in Souris and with the (senior AA) Cardinals and with the AAA team too,” he said.

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