Photo Credit: Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports

The Vancouver Canucks have loaned out their two first-round draft picks from the 2014 NHL Entry Draft – forwards Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann – to the Utica Comets of the American Hockey League, who advanced to the second-round of the Calder Cup Final this weekend.

Virtanen and McCann saw their CHL seasons end this past weekend when their respective teams were eliminated in the conference final by a pair of clubs that are probably Memorial Cup bound. Beating the likes of the Brandon Wheat Kings and Connor McDavid’s Erie Otters is a tough task, but so is cracking an elite AHL lineup this late in the season. 

Can the addition of either Virtanen or McCann, or both, help the Comets in the short-term?

For now the noises that Canucks management and Utica coaches are making would suggest that McCann and Virtanen are going to have trouble cracking the Comets lineup.

“We want those guys to practise with the team,” Canucks general manager Jim Benning told the Vancouver Sun. “I am leaving it up to the coaches down there whether they are going to get in and play. That will be up to them.”

Comets coach Travis Green meanwhile told News 1130 Sports that neither Virtanen nor McCann would get into the lineup “just because.”

“It has to make sense,” Green said.

So does it make sense for either player to potentially get a sniff?

It certainly might, though it would seem that McCann has an easier path into the Comets’ playoff lineup than Virtanen does. The Comets are relatively deeper on the wings than they are at centre, what with Canucks prospects and wingers Nicklas Jensen and Brendan Gaunce having both been healthy scratches in the first round. 

Down the middle, in contrast, the Comets have rolled with Cal O’Reilly, Wacey Hamilton, Mike Zalewski and Alex Friesen. That’s a decent group, a group capable of making serious noise in the Calder Cup playoffs, but it’s also a group that you could see McCann perhaps fitting into – even without an injury necessitating it.

McCann, 18, just concluded a massively impressive draft plus-one season for the Soo Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League. 

The young sniper played the role of a bona fide number one centre for the Greyhounds this season and led all pivots on the team in estimated ice-time, according to CHLstats.com. That McCann logged first-line minutes and held down a two-way role for one of the best puck possession teams in the OHL is a very promising sign for his development, but it also would suggest that he might be close to helping a non-NHL professional team win games right off the hop.

The other story of McCann’s season worth noting is that his scoring rates exploded. I’d been told by some OHL scouts following McCann’s draft year that he was more of a “sniper” than a “two-way centre” and that he’d been mis-labeled as the latter mostly because he just hadn’t scored very much in his draft eligible season (that scout suggested to me that the lack of goal scoring was percentage related). When you see the velocity McCann can put on his shot, you start to understand why that OHL scout insisted that McCann should be defined primarily as a goal scorer.

This season the percentages regressed in a favourable direction and McCann managed to score 34 goals despite battling illness at the outset of the campaign. He also finished in the top-15 among all OHL forwards in points per game (minimums 40 games played), and was second in points per game scored among Greyhounds players, behind only Sergei Tolchinsky who is 20-years-old. 

It might take an injury or a disciplinary matter to get McCann into the Comets lineup, but if he gets a sniff at the AHL level, there’s a realistic possibility that he might be a helpful, productive asset.

Virtanen, as we mentioned, may have a more difficult time making his way into the Comets lineup. With Hunter Shinkaruk, Sven Baertschi, Alexandre Grenier, and Cory Conacher cemented into the club’s top-six and Brandon DeFazio, Darren Archibald, Nicklas Jensen, Connor Bancks, Brendan Gaunce all competing for spots in the bottom-six, it’s hard to imagine Virtanen breaking into this lineup.

The heavy forward had some discipline issues in the playoffs with the Calgary Hitmen this year, and there are some concerns about his defensive play. Virtanen even mentioned that the Canucks asked him to work on a few things in his own end this season in a conversation with the Vancouver Sun this week. 

His scoring didn’t really take a quantum leap forward either, although he did score at an elite rate at even-strength according to CHLstats.com’s 5-on-5 P/60 estimates. He also held down a first-line spot (based on estimated ice time) for one of the best puck possession sides in the WHL. 

Virtanen and McCann remain two of Vancouver’s top prospects, but it seems narrowly unlikely that they’ll play a major role for the Utica Comets on their playoff run this spring. 

The odds are that if one of them does manage to make their presence felt though, it’ll probably be McCann and not the player Vancouver selected ahead of William Nylander – the Maple Leafs prospect who has already established himself as a stud AHL point producer.