Virtanen close to making Canucks’ roster

GAME DAY: CALGARY AT VANCOUVER, 7 P.M.

VANCOUVER — For the Vancouver Canucks, reality is 3,700 kilometres away.

It’s there, in Utica, New York, 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 sitdown 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.

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 has 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.

“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 needed to be to be effective. And then we needed to work on the structure part of 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.

“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 at night.”

Green knew it might effect his 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 now. “I always felt when coaches are hard on me, I’m better,” Virtanen added. “I want to go out there and play for the coaches that push me. Green pushes me.”

There are two games left this preseason 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.

“I think I’ve always kind of played this way. It’s easy to play.”

For the first time in a long time, things are looking easier for Virtanen.