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Vancouver Canucks: What's Next for Virtanen? Pedan Shines at Superskills
January 3, 2016, 2:28 PM ET [405 Comments]
Carol Schram
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • RSS • Archive • CONTACT
Jake Virtanen is earning some sympathy in the Twitterverse this morning after getting skewered by the front page of the sports section of The Province.




Virtanen made himself an easy target when the took the third period double-minor that left him sitting in the penalty box when Finland scored the game-winning goal to send Canada home from this year's World Junior tournament without a chance to compete for a medal. But hockey's a team game. The Canadians failed to impress throughout the tournament and once the high-powered Finns got their offense rolling, Team Canada had no answers. There was panic, but they also were absolutely outplayed by the home team in the third period.

Lucas Aykroyd of IIHF.com passed along some postgame quotes from Virtanen:

It was a tough one today, obviously. They’re a good team. They play a good, strong game. It’s definitely not what we wanted.
They were good. We were good too. But the discipline, penalties we were taking...there were some that, personally I thought the refs were kind of on their side a little bit. That’s personally my thought a little bit. I mean, Strome gets crushed from behind and he only gets a two-minute call? I don’t know if that’s only because of the player that hit him or not. But other than that, they’re a good team, they scored when they did. That’s about it.


On Finland's first goal of the game by Patrik Laine with 11 seconds left in the first period, which made the score 2-1 for Canada:

That’s a tough one. You can’t be letting those go. He’s a good player and he’s got a good shot. It’s tough to see that one go in.


On Finland changing goalies at the 7:20 mark of the second period, when Canada re-took the lead at 3-2:

I mean, they probably just wanted a momentum change. That’s what teams do when they’re down. That goalie came in and played a good, strong game. We had a lot of goals there but it was tough to see that one go by.
Last year we had, like here, the home crowd behind you. It’s good. Other than that, on last year’s team, we had a lot of skill set on that team, a team that was pretty experienced. We had a lot of guys who worked hard and really paid the price to block shots, just the little details. I thought they did a good job last year. This year, I mean, I think we kind of took it for granted a little bit. The guys were good, but we weren’t good enough.


Most importantly for Vancouver fans, here's how Virtanen sees the experience fitting in with his season with the Canucks so far:

You have to hate losing here. It’s kind of the same thing with Vancouver right now. We’re trying to get some wins in the win column. I hate losing, so bringing that back to Vancouver, it’s a bad feeling coming here and losing. The goal was to get a gold medal. It’s tough to lose.


Despite the rumours that, win or lose, Virtanen would be headed back to junior after this tournament, Jim Benning was quick to reinforce that the rookie will re-join the Canucks:




Jason Botchford's column in The Province today isn't nearly as inflammatory as the cover headline.

Botchford concurs that Virtanen's combination of size, speed and skill puts him in a select category among NHL players, and Benning stands by what he believes Virtanen can bring:

“I think he has a unique skill set,” GM Jim Benning explained. “The game has got fast. More so this year. It’s hard to get to the net again. But he has the size and strength to get there.

“Even it that game (Saturday), you saw two or three instances where he put his head down and he bulled his way to the net.

“That’s a special skill set.”

“It almost looked like he tried too hard sometimes, and sometimes when you do that things don’t go your way.”


It's certainly Virtanen's style to play on the edge, and that style is not without risks. Ask Todd Bertuzzi.

And don't forget, Bert was a first-rounder who played two full seasons in junior after he was drafted, then confounded the New York Islanders' management to the point where he was shuffled down to the minors in his second season with the team, then traded to Vancouver in the third.

I'm not saying that Virtanen is the second coming of Bertuzzi. I'm just offering an example of how long and winding the road to the NHL can be.

It's not like Virtanen's alone. Look at the mess that's unfolding in Tampa Bay, where the agent for the third-overall pick from 2013, Jonathan Drouin, has make it clear that his client wants out after he was assigned to the AHL over the weekend.




Even Steve Yzerman has to deal with organizational dysfunction, six months after his team reached the Stanley Cup Final.

Here's how Botchford reports that the situation will shake down for Virtanen over the next week:

Virtanen will be reporting back to the Canucks, initially. Whether or not he lasts the rest of the season with the team is a huge question, and it’s one the Canucks will be discussing for the next few days.

The Canucks have set a deadline of Jan. 10 to reach a decision, which is, interestingly, the trade deadline in the WHL.


That's not much time. The Canucks will play three games next week—against Arizona on Monday, Carolina on Wednesday and those Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday. But it sounds like the team's decision won't hinge so much on his performance in those games as it will on their big-picture impression of what's best for Virtanen's development.

“We have control of his environment, everything from his workouts to what he eats while he’s in the room,” Benning said. “We work with him after practice on skill development. And, I think, over the course of the first half of the year, he showed glimpses of the player we think he can be.”

“We have to make sure we develop that skill,” Benning said. “(His role and offensive development) are things we are going to talk about for the next few days.

“We’re going to meet as a management team and we’re going to discuss both the positives and negatives of keeping him.

“At the end of the day, we want to do what’s best for his development.”


Long term, the organization wants Virtanen to be more than a freight train who hits everything that moves. In the end, World Juniors wasn't the ticket to tapping into the skill side of his game, which amplifies the importance of this next move.

Still, Virtanen's just 19. There's time to sort this out.

The Canucks are back at practice at Rogers Arena this morning ahead of their Monday night game against the Arizona Coyotes. Though Ryan Miller's said to be ready to start skating again, he's still absent from today's workout:




It sounds like a good time was had by all at Saturday's SuperSkills competition. Click here for an exuberant report from Daniel Wagner of Pass It to Bulis, who shines the spotlight on Andrey Pedan for winning the hardest shot and fastest skater competitions.




He smiles almost as big as Ben Hutton!

Some timing issues mean that Pedan might not have *actually* won fastest skater outright, but I guess it's time to stop mentioning the big Russian in the same breath as Dana Murzyn or Andrew Alberts. The 22-year-old has some skill to go along with his body and while it's early yet, we may discover that Jim Benning pulled a heist on Garth Snow when he pried the defenseman out of the New York Islanders organization last year in exchange for Alexandre Mallet and a 2016 third-rounder.

On balance, I really like what we've seen from Pedan so far. He's now facing the same challenge as every other young Canuck: earning the trust of Willie Desjardins.

Pedan should get at least a couple more weeks to try to make his case. Luca Sbisa is skating but still not back practicing with the team. My guess is that we'll see Brandon Sutter back in the lineup—maybe in a week or so?—before we see Sbisa.

Here's the stream of Saturday's SuperSkills event:

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