Virt’s girth on the mark
Winger looks set to scale up to the NHL, Ben Kuzma writes.
There’s the weight and the wait.
The two are always intertwined in any Jake Virtanen inquisition because the Vancouver Canucks winger has had to push himself to a fitness level to ensure that the wait to secure and maintain a National Hockey League roster spot for the foreseeable future is over.
In that regard, Virtanen’s weight is right at a targeted 215 pounds. It’s far removed from a year ago, when the Canucks say the sixthoverall pick in the 2014 draft arrived at 231 pounds despite a supposed directive to hit 213.
Virtanen looked good in a gruelling opening main-camp session Wednesday at Rogers Arena — complete with what looked like an end-of-session bag skate — and the right wing knows there’s a fourthline carrot dangling in front of him.
“Salad with chicken — that’s my cheat day from now on,” the 21-year-old said with a chuckle.
“You learn your body. When I was 18 and 19 it was: ‘Oh, I’m still young and I’ll burn it off no problem.’ I can walk by a hotdog stand and gain five pounds.”
Last season, Virtanen was sent down to the AHL’s Utica Comets to prop his game back up after appearing in just 10 NHL games and amassing but one assist.
There seemed to be some disconnect with former coach Willie Desjardins because the optics of being assigned to the American Hockey League on Nov. 9, being recalled four days later and then shipped out again on Nov. 15, were fuzzy.
“I don’t know what it was, to be honest,” Virtanen said. “(Desjardins) is a super nice guy and a lot of guys loved him, but I never talked to him that much. I got over that.
“Every player goes through adversity and I got through that. I’m over that last-year phase and I’ve come in with a new mindset — a fresh mind and a reset.”
That reset has Virtanen at the right time and place in his young career to make a contributing impact. Virtanen, who was raised in Abbotsford, trained hard at the Xceed Training Centre in Chilliwack during the off-season. His nine goals and 10 assists in 65 games with Utica last season are misleading — it was about the daily process to get Virtanen’s body, head and game to an NHL level.
“I learned a lot, a lot of good things and some games I was playing 16 or 20 minutes,” said Virtanen, who was aligned with Markus Granlund and Sven Baertschi on Wednesday. “Little details and habits through video and things I wouldn’t see right away on the ice, I picked them up easy and I could translate it on the ice. Those habits will transfer over.”
The challenge for Travis Green — last year’s bench boss in Utica and the Canucks’ head coach this season — was to channel Virtanen’s mindset to get over the frustration of not scoring.
“I saw a guy who went through some adversity and it was a good season to learn,” Green said. “People talk about him just playing on the fourth line, but to play on the fourth line in the NHL when you’re 21 is pretty good because we’ve talked of having a fourth line that can play big minutes. For him, it’s get your foot in the door and play.”