khay

Yeah... I seriously don't get why we drafted this bum "off the board." I really don't get people saying Juolevi was the "off the board" pick. He was ranked top defenceman in Bob McKenzie's list and was ranked number 6 overall. McKenzie's ranking is consensus based, which means that is his average ranking amongst the scouts that Bob asked. Picking a guy at #5 when he is ranked #6 is hardly "off the board". Off the board is like, picking a guy that is ranked #20 at #5.

Had to give you a plus. It was a nice reminder of the type of player JV can be. We do need skill but we also need this on our team.

Connor McDavid? I guess McDavid is a much better skater than JV overall, I mean who else since Bure could shift directions at full speed? But open ice, maybe you are right. Even McDavid may not be able to catch Virtanen.

I would still pick Virtanen over Ritchie. I think with Jake's skating, at the least, he is going to be a very effective third liner on this team. A type of third liner that we do not have right now. If Virtanen is paired with a superior talent with high hockey IQ and playmaking skills (2017 draft?), then I think Jake can be a first line player. Just like Burrows was a first line player because he complimented the Sedins well but no one think Burr is a first liner by himself, Jake can be a first line player who compliments a superior player. Ritchie is much slower than Virtanen and just like Virtanen, he cannot drive a scoring line by himself (at least based on what I saw so far). Then, only thing he offers over Virtanen is what? Size? Work ethics? Slightly better hockey sense? All of those are easily attainable; I prefer player with elite level skating with size. The game is played faster than ever before, and we need big guys that are elite skaters at the same time. If you think about it, if Jake had high hockey IQ on top of his size and elite level skating, the 2014 draft would be known as Ekblad-Virtanen draft. Let's hope good coaching along with the time in the AHL can improve Jake's decision making abilities; then we will have a very good player.

Wow. JV's skating ability, that ability to drive the play forward in a rush is already at the NHL level. Drive the play, get the puck to the playmaker, get the puck back, shoot. I think Baertschi and Virtanen or Granlund and Virtanen will be a good duo once JV is ready to join the team full time.

Thank you for the insight and a very reasonable post. I agree that if the forwards don't know what to do with the puck when they have it, then what can a defenceman do? I hope JB gets us some capable forwards that know what to do with the puck. And comparison to Salo is really interesting. Never considered Salo as a Juolevi comparison but if you are right, then that's basically a top 2D. Salo, when healthy was a top 2D: a puck mover that is solid defensively with a booming shot. As you said, Salo was always quick to assess his options and always made the right and obvious decision. And from what I have seen, Juolevi does exactly that. Not your Duncan Keith or Erik Karlsson but a top 2D nonetheless.

Yes. But that debate is different from Juolevi vs Tkachuk debate. Ehlers has shown that he is a top line winger, Nylander has shown that he is a top 6 winger. No one denies that Ehlers (or Nylander) would have been the better pick based on the performances up to this season. Juolevi has not played a single game for us so comparing Tkahuck to Juolevi is really pointless right now. If those people start complaining about it after Juolevi struggles to transition to the NHL then that's acceptable. As a fan, you have the right to complain. In fact, it is your job is to complain but complaining that we missed the boat on Tkachuk now when we've seen nothing from Juolevi so far? That's just immature.

Good point. But I disagree with the bolded. My guess is that those people that have complained about Nichuskin vs Horvat have now moved on to complain about Tkachuk vs Juolevi. Those people are never going to stop talking. Once Juolevi makes the team and does well, they will move on to 2017 draft pick, say we choose a player who doesn't make the team right away and a later pick does, and it will start all over again. Such is the life cycle at the Canucks fan forum.

I agree. Why do we need to discuss about Tkachuck here? Whenever Tkachuk does something, something will be said of him in comparison to Juolevi who hasn't even played a single shift for the Canucks yet. Tkachuck has his own strengths and I think he will be a good player for sure but comparison of the two players at this point is a bit premature. We need to see what Juolevi can do in the next year or two before we can compare the two players. I still have high hopes for Juolevi. The core of Finland team was Aho, Puljujarvi, Laine, and Juolevi. One argument that I hear often is that Laine, Aho, and Puljujarvi drove the team and Juolevi was just the passenger but I don't think that way. If you don't have a capable puck mover at the back, then the job of those forwards get a lot harder. Case in point, see the Vancouver Canucks and the Sedins before and after Ehrhoff left. At the minimum, we have is a player that can move the puck to the forwards for quick transition to offence. This means that if we are able to draft and develop some good forwards and as players like Horvat, Baertschi, Boeser, Granlund, Virtanen, Goldobin, and Dahlen become better, we have a defenceman that can make life easy for these forwards and compliment the team play well. The absolute best case is that he improves his puck handling skills, skating, and just becomes better defensively and then we have a top 2 D. What is there to not like about this kid? He is a type of player that we don't have in our roster or prospect pool. Stecher, Hutton, Tryamkin, and to some extent, Subban and McEneny are different types of players from Juolevi. We need this type of player just as much as Tkachuk type of player. And at the last year's draft, we didn't exactly know what JV was going to be like so I understand the decision to not pick Tkachuk, which felt like a picking a type of player that we already kind of had in the system. It turned out that Virtanen wasn't ready to go so in hindsight, we could have used Tkachuk but at that time, we didn't know.

My opinion on Goldobin so far is that the skill is clearly there but the compete level isn't quite there for him to be a consistent play at the NHL level yet. It looks like he is one of those players that was able to get to this level based on superior talent and skill so that he is not used to being at a place where almost everyone that he's playing against has nearly as much skill as he does and/or is bigger and stronger with superior compete level to make his skill useless. A consistent work ethics from him would get us a skilled top 6 winger. If he doesn't ramp up his intensity level, then well, I don't want to think about that case just yet. I'm optimistic, it seems like he loves hockey and the players who love hockey eventually figure it out.

Since Bo and Boeser are great guys, then they should have no trouble bringing Jake along and integrating him as part of the team that buys into the team first mentality. By saying Bo and Boeser are going to be "hanging out" but not with Jake makes it sound like Bo and Boeser aren't great guys. I'm sure JV is going to figure it out and be a very good player for us. I don't expect that he will out perform Ehlers or Nylander but I do expect that he will come in to next season's camp in good shape, ready to compete... although I think he will probably start next season in the AHL, I think he will be our #1 call up option.

I don't get this type dislike for Jake. He is one of our prospects and we shouldn't pit him as some teenage punk. From what I can tell, he is working hard to improve on his deficiencies.

50+ point centerman who is good on the draw, solid defensively, and plays a heavy game. If there is such thing as a recipe for winning the Stanley cup, that's a heavy center, minute eating defenceman, and a goaltender with nerves to make that clutch, timely saves. We got the heavy center part covered with Bo. If one of or both of Tryamkin and Juolevi does become minute eaters and Demko becomes the second coming of Cory Schneider, then I think we got the main pieces in place. All we need to do is to supplement them with key players. An offensive threat like Hischier would be great but if the BPA when we pick is a defenceman with a chance to become an elite defenceman that wouldn't be bad way to build either. Chi: Got the core pieces down with Toewes, Keith, and Crawford. Features elite sniper in Kane as well as elite at everything winger in Hossa. LA: Rivals Chicago with Kopitar, Doughty, Quick. Featured clutch goal scorer in Carter as well as a team full of heavy players made for the playoffs. Bos: Bergeron, Chara, Thomas. Bergeron is not exactly a heavy player but Boston featured Kreijci to carry the offensive load who basically complimented Bergeron perfectly. Pit (2016): Success story of tanking. Any team with Crosby and Malkin is a contender. But they had healthy Letang, a puck mover who can eat a lot of minutes and until Murray, they were cupless despite all the talent in the world in Crosby and Malkin. 09 cup was also thanks to Fleury's key saves. Of course, they had the fastest third line in the league as well.

I agree. I think people are just upset because we could've had Ehlers, but we need to accept what we have is Virtanen. And as you said, if he is paired with creative line mate, he can be a 20-30 goal scorer with physicality.

This trade gives us another winger prospect on top of Boeser, Virtanen, and Dahlen. Considering the fact that Baertschi and Granlund look like they are going to be at worst 20 goal scorers and Boeser looking like a sure thing, we only need one of Virtanen, Goldobin, and Dahlen to reach their potential to round out the top 6 winger positions. Draft a good center this draft and we should be competitive within few years. Go Canucks Go

So let's see, JB should have drafted, Ehlers instead of Virtanen, Pastrnak instead of McCann, and Tkachuk instead of Juolevi. Our lineup this season could have been Baertschi-Horvat-Ehlers Pastrnak-Granlund-Tkachuk Sedin-Sedin-Hansen Burrows-Sutter-Eriksson $hit, that's cup caliber lineup and there's also Boeser coming up. So much for JB being the draft guru. He f*cked it up big time. Only if we still had Gillis.

Sedins still are. They are second line players but they get exposed so often now because they are assigned first line duties. Baertschi also is a legitimate top 6 I think.

I do think Tkachuk can and was considered in the same tier as Juolevi, as per Bob McKenzie (http://www.tsn.ca/matthews-goes-wire-to-wire-as-tsn-s-top-prospect-1.511597): Tkachuk doing well now does prove that had we picked him, we wouldn't be regretting it but it doesn't prove that he is going to be more valuable to our team than Juolevi will be. We are yet to see what Juolevi can do for us. To be honest, our team was lacking a defence prospect with potential to be elite (for a long time), that there was plenty of speculation going around that if we weren't picking Dubois, we were going to pick a defenceman. A lot of people were hoping for Sergachev but I guess JB decided to take the best overall defender rather than take a bit of a gamble in Sergachev -- perhaps more dynamic player than Juolevi but less rounded player.

I hope you are right in this assessment because I really like Granlund and I do see a lot of skill... but I've gotta be honest, it's kind of hard to believe this because Naslund could shoot almost as well as Sakic.

Just dropped in to say, I like this kid more and more. The fact that he can be effective with the Sedins show that he has an extremely high hockey IQ. Good job JB!

Nice. At this point, we have to acknowledge that Ehlers was the BPA at #6. The dynamic and speedy player that could help our team a lot right now by forming our first line with Baer-Bo and help ease the burden on the Sedins. As you said, although it doesn't look like Virtanen will have Ehlers' offensive output, I still do not doubt that he will turn out to be a useful player for us. He will be an NHLer at some point, the only question is what his role will be and that's up to him.

A two-way forward, playing a 200 ft player that scores 40 goals? So a Selke winner basically.

Nice post. Put into words what I had in mind but couldn't. I think his ability to read the situations to see what options are available and his ability to choose the best option among the available options is at an elite level. To see why this is important, compare this to a player, who has tunnel vision and is unable to assess all available options in a short amount of time or a player who can see all the available options but does not always make the optimal decision. Us fans in the stands or watching on TV can see all available options because we have the bird's eye view. The players cannot see all the options so when we see a player miss an opportunity to break out on what looks like an obvious passing option, we criticize them, not realizing that the best option was not visible to the player in question. With OJ, I think there will be far less criticism in this regards compared to other players but as you said, if he does not learn to transition faster so that the options that he sees don't disappear, he won't amount to anything better than a top 4. However, if he is able to do it, then he will be an elite level defenceman. That's how I feel about OJ.

Maybe that's already happening. Sometimes, you gotta take a step back in order to take two steps forward. He may be going back to the basics and re-working things right now. It may seem like he is standing still or even going back in development but I'm sure he will take steps forward when he is ready.

He does look good indeed. To be honest, I would be shocked if he doesn't become an NHL regular someday. Whether he will be better than Ehlers or Nylander is unknown, but he will be playing in the NHL. He generates very good shooting chances with his speed and he does possess a very hard shot but most of them are one and done. In the junior, a lot of those shots actually go in so when I watch him now, it sometimes feels like he doesn't have an idea on what to do after taking a good shot. Like, he shoots, and skates to the back of the net looking confused. At the pro level, most of those shots won't go in so basically learning how to continually generate offensive opportunities is one thing that he needs to improve on. Basically, there is no way one player can prolong offensive zone time so he just needs to learn to make use of his teammates better. It sounds simple but it's actually hard especially because some of his current line mates are probably not anywhere near him in terms of skill so adjusting himself to help players of less caliber play better is something that he needs to do. In fact, any successful professional needs to be able to do this and if Jake learns how to do that, he will be in the NHL scoring a lot of goals.