Here at Canucks Army, we love three things more than anything in the
world: prospects, prospect rankings, and whining about prospect
rankings.  Every summer we vote on and rank the top-20 Canucks prospects to
take stock of what’s in the system, and every summer we hear vocal
complaints from our readers they disagree with our rankings.

So this year, in our mid-term ranking, we gave you the chance to vote on prospects and
have a say on these players.  Since our summer rankings, we’ve
simplified the definition of “prospect” to any player in the Vancouver
Canucks’ system that is eligible for the Calder Trophy if they were to
play in the NHL this year.  This means that players like Linden Vey and
Joacim Eriksson who were not rated over the summer will be covered in
this series.

Without any further ado, here is the 2nd highest rated Canucks Prospect

One thing sticks out to me in watching the above video of Jake Virtanen’s highlights, is that half of the “highlights” are him hitting people.  You don’t need to be good to be a big hitter, in fact players who do not have the puck very often are the ones who are most often laying out the big hits. Maybe Vritanen, who plays for the Calgary Hitmen is just a staunch literalist. He’s a Hitmen forward, so he better live up to his team’s name. 

Anyway there was a lot of good that came out of Virtanen’s performance in the World Juniors, and we will return to this subject.

It’s not a surprise that most of us at Canucks Army were not particularly happy with the Virtanen pick initially. It’s not because we think Virtanen will be a bad player, but rather because of the high opportunity cost the Canucks paid to draft him.  When you have a pick that is as high as 6th overall, you should aim to draft first line players and not the second liners who hail from your local area. 

This season Virtanen is back in action after a major shoulder surgery that prevented him from training for nearly six months.  He’s still a very young player – he didn’t turn 18 until a month and a half after he was drafted – and that one year can make a huge difference when it comes to forward development.

As of this writing, Virtanen has improved upon his 1 point/game rate from last year and currently has 38 points in 34 games (good for a 1.18 points/game translation).  You can see that Virtanen started off the year slowly but has been steadily improving all year.

Playing on a stacked Hitmen side, Virtanen is only receiving second line ice time. When you take that into consideration, Virtanen is easily the most efficient even-strength point producer on his team (he’s actually one of the most efficient even-strength point producers in the entire WHL). Virtanen is well into the black by team-relative Goals-For percent and he’s third among all Hitmen forwards in Goals Created per Game.

Deployment-wise Virtanen’s estimated Quality of Competition is 1.249 which is the 17th most difficult in the WHL among all regular players.  His estimated Quality of Teammates is quite low at 0.59, which is in the bottom 3rd of the league. This suggests that Virtanen is being used in very difficult minutes and he is coming out quite well.

Let’s return to the World Junior tournament, where Virtanen surely converted some Canucks fans into believers. That he made Team Canada as a U19 is an impressive feat in its own, but he also played some decent hockey. In 7 games at the WJHC, Virtanen scored 1 goal and 3 assists (an area marked as a “concern” after his draft year).  Virtanen acheived those results while playing on the “Grinder” line while attached to the hip to the QMJHL’s 120th best scorer Frederik Gauthier and Lawson Crouse.  

Hockey Prospectus produced a scouting report on Virtanen recently and had comments on a number of areas including skating, shooting, puck skills, smarts, and physicality.  All bode well for his future.  Their overall assessment of Virtanen is:

So where do we see the young sniper, who is currently producing less than the two-way defensive forward Jarred McCann at the CHL level, fitting into Vancouver’s plans next season?  His age-adjusted comparables show Virtanen is similar to Justin Williams, Benoit Dusablon, Jordan Caron, Terry Chitaroni, Carter Verhaeghe, and Patrick Carigan.  That’s definitely a mixed bag. His production is suggestive of a ceiling as a 2nd line winger, which is most likely where he will end up. 

Some pundits say Virtanen will be on Vancouver’s 2nd line as early as next season, but I can’t see it. Coaches are loath to trust young players generally speaking. On the other hand, Virtanen will be too young to play in the AHL next year, so it’s going to be the show or the WHL again. 

Virtanen isn’t quite guaranteed to make the Canucks next season, but we wouldn’t be shocked to discover that Benning already has him penciled into a position. 

Stay tuned for part seven of this series, which will run on Thursday and cover the best prospect in Vancouver’s system!