tyhee

accurate without "almost"

Virtanen has a much larger frame (though not all that much more height) and has real speed, winning the 30 m sprint both forwards and backwards at the CHL prospects game. He has good hands, shoots well and plays in high traffic areas. Granted, he is a different kind of player than Nylander and may take longer to develop fully, but it seems to me he has enormous upside potential. tyhee

Not normally, no. If someone isn't ready it can be damaging for a career. Granted, it's a very small sample size and he did have a layoff, but so far in Utica he's not scoring and from the little information available there's no reason to believe he's dominating on faceoffs. He may still show he belongs after his conditioning stint, but it's hard to understand him being pushed to the NHL unless and until he shows he belongs. Really, I don't understand the wish to rush the kids before they're ready. A quick sample-look at the 2010-2011 Canucks. Most would probably agree that was a good team (win the President's Cup by 10 points over the runner-up, made it to game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.) That team had only two players who played a sizeable number of games in the NHL in their 19 year old seasons, neither of which was an NHL regular at 19. They were: Ryan Kesler-28 games in Vancouver (5 points, -2); 33 games in AHL and 6 games at the WJC. Manny Malhotra-27 games with NYR, 0 points, -6. The rest of the players on that team spent their 19 YO seasons developing in the minors, junior or Europe. Players take time to develop. One must be patient. Yes, there are certainly exceptions. TL was one-drafted 2nd overall from Medicine Hat as a very mature player with scouting reports suggesting he was captain material who had in his draft year at 17 put up 110 pts in 67 games in his 4th season in Major Junior, and who stood 6'4. By contrast, in his draft year Horvat, who stood 6'0 or so, put up 61 pts in 67 games (same number of games, 49 fewer points)-in his second year in Major Junior. In his draft + 1 year, his third in major junior, he scored 74 pts in 54 g-for a ppg ave of 1.37 compared with Linden at 17 at 1.64 ppg. Will Horvat be ready by the end of his conditioning stint and tryout? I don't know-we'll have to see how he does. It simply is losing hockey, though, for a franchise to rush its young players to the NHL before they show they are ready. That is quite aside from the question of whether to burn a year of the ELC and make players eligible for free agency earlier.

I agree with this. There's not much point in having someone come up just to sit, so unless there's some real reason to play them when Canucks still have a forward in the DNP-CD category, and with Horvat in the AHL for at most 2 weeks, there's a good chance the Canucks don't call anyone up. tyhee

My understanding is that being on injured reserve means unfit to play-so one has to be off of injured reserve to go on a conditioning assignment, which of course requires one to play. TSN's injury page (which isn't always up to date) showed Horvat on injured reserve at the start of the season, then showed him as day to day late this past week. Right now it only shows Stanton, who's on the IRL. http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/injuries tyhee

The word "need" of course raises some real issues of semantics. The Canucks will find enough skaters to finish the season whether they have him or not. The Bad-Burrows isn't in his 20's any more, is in my view unlikely to ever score 20 goals in a season again (perhaps 12-18,) will never be a favourites of the referees and at his age will probably suffer more from injuries then he did a few years ago. The Good-he defends, hits, contributes to team scoring, works hard, kills penalties, is versatile enough to be fill in almost any situation, and still puts opposing players off their games. I've never been in the Canucks' dressing room but suspect he is a good veteran to have there and that in many ways-work ethic for example-he's a good role model. (Then again, there have been parts of his agitating game that perhaps have been less good as an example for younger players, though he's moved on from much of that.) I think when reasonably healthy Burrows still makes a valuable contribution. There's really not much use speculating at this time anyway. The Canucks will be paying him a fair bit over the next three years (though the amounts decrease from year to year,) are unlikely to get value by trading him at present after his tough season in 2013-2014 and certainly are not about to waive a player who can make his contributions. If he's having a decent or good year then it could be more interesting at the trade deadline.