CANUCKS: Virtanen finds his game, thanks to tough love from Green
Tough love approach of coach Green down on the farm appears to be paying dividends
For the Vancouver Canucks, reality is 3,700 kilometres away. It’s there, in Utica, N.Y., where Jake Virtanen experienced a revelation.
Pinpointing the exact moment is challenging. Maybe it was one of the nights he spent by himself in the Comets’ 60-year-old arena between games on a bike, riding for an hour and more.
Maybe it was his first paycheque after his annual salary dipped from nearly $1 million to $70,000.
Or maybe it was one of the countless, brutally honest sit-down sessions Virtanen had with then-Comets head coach Travis Green. Those meetings could be long, more than 30 minutes, and often, about every other day. They’d deconstruct shifts and plays with video sessions that must have felt like they were doing a postgraduate degree in hockey together.
Somewhere in all of this, Virtanen found something he lost. His game.
“I never felt (I lost myself), but Green would show me stuff and I’d say ‘OK, now I’m seeing it,’ ” Virtanen said. “He’d show me where I could move my feet more. Or where there was a guy I could have hit.
“After he’d show me the video, I’d still make the same mistake.
“He’d say ‘Look here, you did it again.’ ”
Eventually, Virtanen said he got it. That’s how it’s looked so far this month as Virtanen played himself into contention to make the Canucks next week.
It’s how it felt too Sept. 16 when the Canucks and Virtanen opened the pre-season hockey season in Los Angeles. Green would later call it one of the better games he’s seen his winger play.
But the most revealing moment that day came after the game. Virtanen was buoyant and bouncing. There was enough adrenalin shooting from his eyes to power the California coast for a week, or three.
“After all that video I’ve watched with Green, I felt like everything was just happening for me,” Virtanen said of that game. “I wasn’t thinking. And I was getting in on the forecheck. I was creating turnovers. I was getting hits.
“It was just second nature for me. It was simple.”
It sure wasn’t simple a year ago. Virtanen was overburdened and under-coached. He weighed too much. He didn’t understand the game enough. Yes he still made the Canucks, but the reasons for it weren’t good ones and quite quickly looked way too much like “hey, we drafted this guy high, and he’s a local kid so he’s on.”
Then came Utica, reality and Green.
Green was both demanding and intense. There were no breaks. Virtanen wasn’t on a first line. He wasn’t on the first power play. There was, however, a plan.
“I had an idea of what I wanted to do with him,” Green said. “He had to buy in to what we were doing. It wasn’t punishment.
“The physical part was getting his condition level to where he need- ed to be to be effective. And then we needed to work on the structure part of the game. Understanding the game and understanding the details within the game.”
Virtanen has a long way to go still to live up to his draft position. He may end up back in Utica. But he does deserve credit for what happened last season in that cold, dark Utica winter. He embraced the idea he needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.
“They had me doing workouts at nighttime right away,” Virtanen remembered. “I’d work out in the morning with the team. Then I’d skate. Then I’d be on the bike. I’d have lunch, go home, sleep for a couple hours and then be back at the rink for 4 or 5 (p.m.).
“Green would still be there. He’d show me video as well at night.”
Green couldn’t recall if he had such a program for any other player over the years.
“We just felt coming back at night would help him,” Green said. “Practices are hard. I didn’t think he could have max efforts in his workouts after practice.
“We talked to Jake and said ‘Hey, it might affect you in the short term. It might affect your game a little bit. But this is not a short-term play. This is a long-term play.’ I thought he benefited from it.” And that’s how Virtanen sees it. “I always felt when coaches are hard on me, I’m better,” Virtanen revealed. “I want to go out there and play for the coaches that push me. Green pushes me.
“I play better when coaches are hard on me. When I grew up in Abbotsford, my coach Brad Bowen would always scream at me.”
Virtanen skated with Bowen this summer a lot and the coach was still screaming at him.
There are two games left this pre-season and things can change. But right now there appears to be no player who has benefited more from the coaching change to Green than Virtanen.
“It’s the exact same system as Utica,” Virtanen said. “I love that system. When we’re breaking out, he wants his wingers to go and that’s my style of game. He wants his wingers to skate.
“I think I’m more Travis style (than Willie Desjardins), obviously. I feel like I will be successful with this style. I think I’ve always kind of played this way Green’s style is more a power forward game. D are breaking out the puck and I’m going. Go go go. It’s simple. It’s easy to play.”
For the first time in a long time, things are looking easier for Virtanen.