Watching him play his last two games has been a real treat. He was easily one of the best (or at least top 2) players in both games. Seemingly every shift for him in both games were "good" shifts. The Hitmen beyond Virtanen, Tambellini, and Sanheim aren't much.
His speed is as advertised. He often takes the puck down the right side and around the back of the net with complete ease as no opposition defender can keep up. There are instances of the Junior league left-to-right move entering the offensive zone that won't be easy to pull of at the professional level. Jake is not excessively physical but does finish checks and will be at the heart of a scrum if there is one. He is also good at receiving checks, maybe an underrated trait, with the checker sometimes being the one to fall when trying to hit Virtanen. He loves to blast away on the powerplay (which worked successfully against Moose Jaw) and had a number of opportunities with that wrist shot. I was hoping to see him shoot off the rush but that didn't really happen much. He is a much better passer than anyone ever gave him credit for coming into the year. His passes back to Sanheim on the PP are sometimes too hard but in general it has been good. A criticism we all heard was that he could learn to use his teammates better and he has done just that. He will always be the shooter on his line, but there were a couple times where he found his teammates in great places for scoring opportunities, which was very encouraging.
Defensively he's got work to do, as many skill-players do. He can sometimes be slow on the backcheck and can be a bit of a "spectator/wanderer" at times in his own end. Luckily, this sort of thing can be coached, and with a better understanding of the defensive side to go with his size and speed, he could become quite reliable defensively.
Yeah, I think Jake is a definite lock barring the (and I won't specify it) "unexpected". People shouldn't underestimate Sanheim either. He skates well for his size (6'3"), is fantastic on the point on the PP, and is just a very reliable player. He doesn't shoot a ton from that point but is adept at setting up teammates and is even good at holding the puck in the zone. There were numerous times in the games I watched where he was able to keep a puck from going offside keeping the o-zone pressure alive. An underrated trait to have. I would be surprised to see him not on the team.
Not from what I've seen, though it's a small sample size. It's not so much a knock on Virtanen as much as it's a testament to the accomplishments of Corey Perry. I don't know how fair it is to anyone to compare a great junior scorer with a perennial 40-goal candidate in the NHL. They both have an edge but Virtanen's physical dynamic is much more prominent.
I will say that Virtanen on the powerplay looks like a Stamkos/Ovechkin. He's on that left side and has that absolute bomb of a shot that his unit tries to set up. Now, remember, that's just a "comparable" and not a "projection".