Patient approach with Virtanen pays off
Fourth-year Canucks winger on pace for career highs, while playing solid defence
Jake Virtanen is two goals away from setting a career high and it’s not even halfway through the season.
After scoring Thursday against the Predators, he has nine goals in 31 games this year. He scored 10 in 75 games last season.
To say the winger is having a career year is an understatement, and that’s just looking at the main scoreboard.
The truth is he has taken big steps forward in his overall game, both in terms of the eye test and the numbers.
The Abbotsford-raised winger has always had a solid two-way game: even as a rookie he posted solid shot-attempt splits. But his defensive game has become more nuanced and more complete, head coach Travis Green said earlier this season.
That Virtanen was promoted to Bo Horvat’s wing this week was a statement about how the coach feels about where Virtanen’s game is right now, given the tough opposition Horvat has been tasked with defending against this season.
Virtanen has also featured in overtime and late in games, such is the faith the coach has in the 22-year-old’s two-way judgment.
There has been growth in the sixth-overall 2014 NHL draft pick’s game this year, that nuance displaying itself in how he’s handling the puck.
When we look at his shot rate, we can already see a difference that matches up with what we’re seeing: He’s shooting less.
And he’s also taking more hits, which further suggests he’s holding on to the puck more.
Is this because he’s looking to move the puck more?
That’s a reasonable supposition, especially given that Virtanen himself has said he has been working on being a better passer.
Anecdotally, the passes he made to set up Adam Gaudette in Los Angeles last month — for the rookie centre’s first NHL goal — and Horvat on Thursday night at Rogers Arena would serve to confirm this. And, again, there are numbers to look at: so far this season, he’s posting the best primary assist rate of his career. He’s setting up his teammates for goals better than ever and has picked up five assists already, halfway to last year’s career high.
Asked about the saucer pass he fired across to Horvat on a firstperiod 2-on-1, Virtanen beamed with pride.
“I’ve been working on it a bit,” he said, though he also said there was some luck involved in completing the saucer pass, which skipped over the stick of Predators defenceman Roman Josi.
If this new passing skill set is real, it’s a powerful item to add to the package that Virtanen already brings to the Canucks’ lineup.
We’ve long known Virtanen is a strong skater and he has a deadly shot as well when he finds space to fire the puck.
Analysis of passing data in the last few seasons suggests that while Virtanen may be one of the league’s best at carrying the puck into the offensive zone, he has also been pretty unlikely to dish the puck off once he has done so.
This makes sense when you look at Virtanen’s scoring record. In junior with the WHL’s Calgary Hitmen, he wasn’t known for his assist totals. What he was known for was being bigger and stronger
than his peers as well as a fantastic skater.
His goals saw him burst away from defenders, taking on goalies one on one.
As has been noted, this essential part of his game has been difficult to transition to the NHL, where defenders are massively better skaters than they are in junior, not to mention being much stronger.
Playing with a centre like Horvat, whose straight-ahead style has some similarities to Virtanen’s, necessitates having a few more wrinkles to one’s game.
Horvat is a great shooter, as evidenced by his finish on the Virtanen pass Thursday. He had to collect the puck after knocking it down off a bounce, then fire it over goalie Pekka Rinne, which is no mean feat in itself.
If Virtanen keeps delivering passes like those, he’ll keep posting points.