Canucks loan Jake Virtanen to Team Canada

It looks like Jake Virtanen is going to be scoring and murdering on an international stage once again. The Vancouver Canucks today announced that the 19-year-old will be loaned to Hockey Canada so he can play in the 2016 World Junior Hockey Championships in Helsinki.

The news comes just minutes after Virtanen completed his second game of his conditioning stint with the Utica Comets. Much like yesterday, he was held off the scoresheet and not used in special teams situations, though he did manage to muster up two shots. With the injury that led to the stint presumably behind him, Virtanen can move on to bigger things.

In this case, the bigger things are games for Team Canada, who coincidentally made their first wave of cuts today. This isn’t Virtanen’s first time representing his country, either; he played in all seven games for last year’s World Junior roster, picking up a goal and three assists en route to a Gold Medal. He’s also played for Canada on three other occasions; twice in 2014 (scoring six points in seven games at the U18’s and one assists in five games at the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament), and once in 2013 (scoring seven points in five games with Canada Pacific at the U17s).

Overall, the decision seems to make the most sense for Virtanen. While training camp made it obvious that he wasn’t going to learn much more by playing in the WHL full-time, regaining offensive confidence and playing in high-emotion games for a few weeks is likely much better for his development than playing ten minutes a night with the Canucks. While it remains to be seen how much of an effect it will have on his play, there’s plenty of reason to believe that any effects would be positive.