Photo Credit: Hockey Canada

The Vancouver Canucks have opted to allow Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann to play NHL hockey beyond the nine-game mark, after which point their respective entry-level contracts will be tolled. 

Despite the pomp and circumstance of this weekend’s video-meeting prank, Canucks general manager Jim Benning has made it clear that McCann and Virtanen will have to continue to prove themselves lest they find themselves playing hockey at a level below the NHL in the not-too-distant future.

“I guess the next kind of point in the schedule is the World Junior (Tournament),” Benning told Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy during a first intermission interview on Monday night. “We’ll see where we’re at if they get asked to play on the World Junior team, we’ll make that decision then.

“And then the 40 game mark is kind of the next spot,” Benning continued. “If we want to burn a year of their free agency going forward. We’ve told the kids to stay focused, work hard and just take it day-by-day.”

The 2016 World Junior tournament will be contested in Helsinki, Finland the begins on December 26, so we know that McCann and Virtanen have about six weeks to continue to make a strong case to remain with the club. Last season Team Canada’s WJC recruiting efforts were led by Kelowna Rockets owner Bob Hamilton, who targeted Anthony Duclair, Curtis Lazar, Bo Horvat, and Jonathan Drouin as 19-year-old NHLers that would maybe be permitted to participate in the tournament. Hamilton ended up landing half of his targets, and Lazar and Duclair were key contributors on Team Canada’s 2015 gold medal winning U20 side.

The “we need two-and-a-half weeks” pitch that the Canucks reportedly heard when considering whether or not to allow Horvat to participate in the tournament last year will be different this time around. It’s a lot easier to make the case that you don’t need a player for too long when the tournament is in Toronto, then it is when the tournament is in Finland. This season we’re talking – conservatively – about at least a three week commitment, particularly when you factor in jet lag as a serious peak-performance issue.

In discussing the club’s decision to keep Virtanen and Horvat on Sunday, Benning elaborated on the influence of the World Juniors as a pressure point for his teenaged players.

“We’ll decide mid-December where we’re at, injury-wise where we’re at,” Benning said of the possibility of McCann and Virtanen heading to Finland with Team Canada’s U20 team. “If they’re continuing to play and keep developing and helping our team, we probably won’t let them go, like we kept (Bo) last year.

“But if we see a dip in their play and we’re healthy again, then we probably won’t have that option…

It seems hard to imagine from today’s vantage point, but keeping Horvat during the World Juniors wasn’t exactly a slam dunk decision. At that point in the year, Horvat was really struggling. The Canucks elected to keep the 19-year-old though, and he struggled for an additional month or two before really finding an extra gear in February. 

Learning at the NHL level certainly seemed to help Horvat, but McCann and Virtanen are different prospects. What works for the gander may not work for the geese, and from the sounds of it, the Canucks are going to keep an open mind and evaluate this decision based on a variety of factors – including the club’s injury situation and how Virtanen and McCann appear to be progressing at the NHL level.

We’ll know more in the near future, but for now we can update Luca Sbisa’s injury status from ‘more than day-to-day’ to ‘officially week-to-week’. Okay it isn’t much of an update.

“Luca did an MRI today, we’re going to meet with the doctors after the game, and we should have a better idea,” Benning said of Sbisa’s status.

Jacob Markstrom should be ready to return to action at some point during the club’s upcoming seven-game road trip. First though, as expected, Markstrom will head to Utica for a conditioning stint with Vancouver’s American Hockey League affiliate.

“Markstrom is going to come with us Thursday and start the road trip,” Benning said. “He might go down for a couple of games conditioning to Utica on the weekend and then we’ll bring him back up and he should be ready to go.”