Just get it over with and send Jake Virtanen back to junior

Jake Virtanen might not be the best prospect in hockey, but he’s certainly one of the most intriguing. He’s shown a lot of potential for future success, and he plays the game in a way that unites the old school and the new crowd. He has the smooth skating and the scoring touch needed to play the modern game but turns back the clock with murderous bodychecks and an in-your-face attitude.

Whether you wanted somebody else in his draft position or not, it’s hard to argue against the idea that Jake Virtanen going to make a great Vancouver Canuck one day. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s not today, and we need to stop kidding ourselves with the idea that “the day” could be tomorrow, next week, or anytime soon.

As you already know, the Canucks have a two-way street to travel upon with Virtanen this year. As a 19-year-old prospect developed in North America, he’s ineligible to play in any professional league other than the NHL. This means that he’s either going to spend his time with the Canucks, or with the Calgary Hitmen. There’s no real middle ground, so you have to pick between letting him be a big fish in a small pond, or making him a boy in a league of men.

Some will argue that Virtanen is physically capable of the rigors of the NHL. After all, he’s an aggressive player, and he’s filled into a strong 6’1, 208-pound frame. There’s no reason that he shouldn’t be able to keep up with the rigors of a full season. These people aren’t wrong; I don’t doubt that Virtanen could stay with this team. But what does he have to gain by staying up?

Simply put, teenaged hockey players are young enough to require “teaching by experience” more than their veteran counterparts. Competitive minutes give them scenarios to put what the coaches instill into in practice, well, to practice. As such, Virtanen needs to be put into the situations you want him to learn, and he needs to be put in them frequently.

The hype on a player like Virtanen has always been that he has top line power forward upside; a player who can create space, buzz to the net, and help his linemates cap off a play. At the start of this year, my initial thought was to try him out as the Sedin Twins’ latest right-wing mercenary.

Of course, that isn’t going to happen. The team has experimented by putting long-term foundational centre Brandon Sutter in that position to start the year. Radim Vrbata rides shotgun on the second line, with Sven Baertschi being the man on the left wing (though they seem to be going with Brandon Prust tomorrow, which is a different discussion altogether). Alex Burrows is around, Jannik Hansen is looking good. There’s a big logjam on the wing.

This means that Virtanen, bluntly, hasn’t really had much of a place to play. So much so, that he didn’t make his debut until the fourth game of the season. In that one, he played with Derek Dorsett and a temporarily correctly assigned Brandon Sutter on the third line. Even then, it’s tough to say that he really “played”, he had just nine minutes of ice time, and 75% of his shifts started in the defensive zone. 

If you’re trying to build an offensive presence, especially with somebody who just had a down year, sitting him in the pressbox for most of the games and barely using him in shutdown minutes isn’t the way to do it. I understand that by playing him sparingly, the Canucks can delay their nine-game deadline to send him back to the Hitmen, but the longer they do that, the more games he misses. As I write this, the Hitmen are in the midst of their eighth game of a 72 game season. This means he’s missed over 10% of the year already, and that will grow with each passing day.

If you take a look at teenaged rookies to play at least half the season with their NHL team since the 2005 lockout, you’ll notice that most teams didn’t hold on to their top-end talent unless they were confident in their ability to play full-time minutes. If you look at a player like Gabriel Landeskog, whose playstyle most closely lines up with what the Canucks would like Virtanen to become, he was put into a position where he was able to play nearly nineteen minutes per game and average over three shots on goal per outing. 

Granted, Landeskog was a second overall pick and the Avalanche were okay with just about any standings position in his rookie year, but the trust paid off for them in the long haul. A look at the bottom of the list shows players who either failed to pan out at all, had lower expectations placed on them, or took a long time to come into their own. James Wright, Brett Connolly, Jiri Tlusty, James Sheppard, Nino Niederreiter, Colton Gilles, and Tom Wilson are all players who received fewer than twelve minutes per game, rarely put pucks on net, and to date, have combined for zero 40 point seasons. Brandon Sutter is also on that list, which is a little awkward.

If you add a returning Chris Higgins to the mix, things get even more crowded up front for the Canucks, which could limit Virtanen’s minute’s further. Though, it’s not like they aren’t already moving in that direction; he’s been projected to play again tomorrow, but only in a fourth line capacity.

I understand the argument against sending Virtanen back to junior. He’s played a few years there, shown that he can produce, and at this point, could coast on being the physical specimen that he is and barely use an ounce of talent down the stretch. But the reality is simple; even in that worst case scenario, six months of care-free, casual hockey, he still has the benefit of playing many more minutes and many more games. 

Thanks to rookie camp, training camp, and the start of this season Canucks have had Virtanen in their possession for a few months. At this point, they’ve probably assembled their list of things that they’d like him to work on. If he’s as committed of a prospect as they need him to be, they can send him on a plane to Calgary and let him get working away. In the best case, he tightens up his game, regains the scoring touch that didn’t grow to their hopes last year, lights up the World Juniors, and comes back with unparalleled confidence and hunger to make next year’s team.

Jake Virtanen might be ready to play in the NHL, but if the team isn’t ready for him, and he can still learn a thing or two without burning a year of his entry-level deal, why not take advantage of that? Get him back to the WHL, and do it as soon as possible. To me, that scenario is infinitely useful than using arguably your best (second best at worst) as “emergency Derek Dorsett”, which wastes his development time, your own evaluation time, and the time of his temporary teammates.