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Jake Virtanen | #18 | RW


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8 hours ago, shad0w4life said:

No it's the whole omg JV is amazing nonsense while calling for Burmistrov to be cut etc.

Sorry but he's useless without everyone else doing the work.

 

 JV has done jack squat besides accept gift passes from better players and not learn how to line change...against random players from multiple leagues in preseason, he struggled in the AHL doubt that has changed. 

 

I'd love to be wrong but he's still not ready for NHL from his play.

LOL. You are the worst JV basher to be around. So the goals that he has this preason don't matter, nor the takeaways, nor the hits. Got it. Your opinion of him struggling is purely over the fact that he had a bad AHL year.

 

We get it, Shad0wlife. You like Boeser over Virtanen. No need to restate THE EXACT arguments over and over to support your point. It's not working. Trying again is not going to make your argument more legitimate. But one thing I get is that you don't like Virtanen. You've been proven wrong multiple times so far. So don't say you 'love to be wrong'. You have. Many times.

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2 hours ago, Alflives said:

I don't believe any true Canuck's fan wants Jake, or any of our picks to fail, just to prove a point.  We are finally seeing Jake at weight and fit.  This is the player he is, and it's a good one.

Well I suppose it can be a hyperbole to say that, but I feel some days it feels like someone wants him to fail.

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2 hours ago, N4ZZY said:

haha. seriously, though, Jake has had a good pre-season. solid outings every time he was on the ice. and no, he didn't just accept gift passes from better players, he has created turnovers with his speed, and scored with his wicked shot release. the guy has demonstrated promising signs this pre-season. I guess some fans here don't really want him to succeed. 

 

Funny, isn't it, some people just hate seeing others succeed.  It reminds me of a lot of people's politics - they'd rather have the country go to hell than have someone else do better than them.  The Age of Envy.

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I've been pretty critical of Virtanen in the past, and I wanted nothing more than for him to prove me wrong. This training camp his performance made critics eat their words, and I could not be happier. Really played like he had a chip on his shoulder and I can't wait to see more from him this season. Hope he keeps it up and becomes that elusive powerforward Vancouver has been starving for. I also like how his on-ice awareness seems to have gotten better too. Great stuff from Jake overall. 

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7 minutes ago, Shiftynifty said:

Would be ecstatic if Jake can make the team and have a 15G/15A season to build on. 

With a good playmaker on his line, he could do that - he has the speed to get around people, he has a very good shot, he is strong enough to assert himself around the net,and he can bounce defencemen off the puck - with a wee more experience he might make an interesting penalty killer, too - the strength to pull past a defender on a turnover, and the speed to not see him again.

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In defense of those being thrown under the bus, not all of us were on the polar end of a spectrum. There were a good number of posters who were disappointed with Jake's development but also still hopeful that he would turn out well. 

 

I'm not ashamed to admit that I did not expect Jake to have as good a preseason as he's had, I very much expected that he would be heading to Utica where I hoped he would show improvement over last year. But that being said I fully believe that he's earned a spot on the Canucks to start this season. I'm delighted to see how much he's improved this summer and I hope he keeps improving.

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I’m surprised we’re at this point with Jake. I didn’t think he’d be ready, but I guess I knew physically he’d be capable. If he can keep the momentum up, this could be a pivotal time for him.

 

All that said, if we have any chance at competing in the Western conference, we need Boeser to be better than Virtanen.

 Jake has flashes of dominance, but Brock is on an altogether different level.

 

It’s easy to imagine who will gain more trust on the ice of the two...

 

Edited by nergish
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Now that we all seem to be in agreement that Virtanen's future is going to be bright, I want to bring up the concern some people had about Jake's hockey sense. With his very good preseason, I noticed that there is no more concerns or talk of his lack of hockey IQ/hockey sense. Did he always have it or did he learn it down at the farm? I always felt he had hockey sense and posted something similar in the past.

 

Here is a nice piece on hockey sense I quickly googled.http://builtforhockey.com/hockey-sense-part-1/

 

 

Quote

 

What hockey sense is

The way I see and understand the concept of hockey sense is the following:

Hockey sense refers to a player’s level of awareness of several important factors while on the ice during a hockey game. In other words, hockey sense refers to how well a player can literally “sense” or feel himself, the puck, opponents, and other various actions taking place around him during competitive play. Furthermore, hockey sense is not only about the here and the now (the present), but what is about to unfold in the next few moments.

There are also varying levels of hockey sense. Let’s take a look at a few situations and see how players with average hockey sense and players with advanced hockey sense differ in their analysis of the game.

*On a side note, I’ll use the terms hockey sense and hockey IQ interchangeably. They both relate to how well a player sees, understands, and plays the game.

 

At a basic level, a hockey player with average or near-average hockey sense knows at all times where he is on the ice.

While this may sound quite simple—and some of you may even think that this comes naturally to all players—consider that most players aren’t even at this level. Some players are so puck-focused that their placement and positioning never even crosses their mind until it’s oftentimes too late to react.

Players with average hockey sense will know they are “near the blue line”, “on the backcheck” or “in front of the net”. While this is okay—and in most leagues, just enough to get by—there’s a whole other level of hockey sense.

Players with above average or exceptional hockey sense take in a ton more information subconsciously than this.

Instead of “I’m near the blue line”, they’re thinking “I’m just inside the blue line, I have a teammate driving the net wide and I’m only a few seconds ahead of my back-checker so I have to move the puck quick before he catches me. The best play for me in this situation is a rebound shot off the far pad for my teammate at the net”.

This of course all happens on a subconscious level at remarkable speeds, and is second nature to players with a high Hockey IQ.

This is the level that the Hockey IQ greats are at—think of Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Nicklas Backstrom and Nick Lidstrom just to name a few.

These are all players who think and see the game in way more depth than others. While players at an amateur level are taking in minor information on their surroundings during a game, these players—the top in the world—are taking in an extensive amount of information, making them master decision makers with and without the puck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Ray_Cathode said:

With a good playmaker on his line, he could do that - he has the speed to get around people, he has a very good shot, he is strong enough to assert himself around the net,and he can bounce defencemen off the puck - with a wee more experience he might make an interesting penalty killer, too - the strength to pull past a defender on a turnover, and the speed to not see him again.

Did anyone just mention a Hansen Torres hybrid.... Nothing would excite me more...

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11 hours ago, Hutton Wink said:

...some of us which after 700 or so pages finally had enough of 5th Line, the frog, and other incessant (obsessed) whingers.  Thanks for babysitting them in the meantime, and Jake improving was of course the best way to shut them up and stop their defecating all over this place.

Post of the day....Thank you

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9 hours ago, suitup said:

I've been pretty critical of Virtanen in the past, and I wanted nothing more than for him to prove me wrong. This training camp his performance made critics eat their words, and I could not be happier. Really played like he had a chip on his shoulder and I can't wait to see more from him this season. Hope he keeps it up and becomes that elusive powerforward Vancouver has been starving for. I also like how his on-ice awareness seems to have gotten better too. Great stuff from Jake overall. 

That's the thing the people who have been bashing him for so long just don't get........it's not this training camp or pre-season, he played this way most of last year, but all they do is stat watch rather than listen to the people who were actually watching him play.

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1 hour ago, stawns said:

That's the thing the people who have been bashing him for so long just don't get........it's not this training camp or pre-season, he played this way most of last year, but all they do is stat watch rather than listen to the people who were actually watching him play.

Some claimed to have watched him play and basically said: "I see no progression in his game"... Oddly enough most of the haters have gone quiet. Interesting how that works.

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I am in the camp that thought Virtanen was not living up to expectations but I had high hopes he would figure "it" out and start progressing and evolving into the player we all thought he could be. I am very pleased with the camp he is having and hope he can become a consistent threat on the ice.

 

Keep it up Jake! We are all rooting for you, even if some of us can't admit it.

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I have to go out on a limb here. I've been thinking about this for a while now. But Virtanen really reminds me of Corey Perry. Full of piss n' vinegar, can snipe the puck, plays dirty but in a good way (if he's on your team lol). Can hit and play a power game, and is not a liability defensively. Pretty similar body types. Anyways, I think there are some definite comparables. Thoughts?

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27 minutes ago, Fantomex said:

Some claimed to have watched him play and basically said: "I see no progression in his game"... 

...because he wasn't scoring.

 

And when some of us said yes, but he's playing well and he's not a play driver and needs to play with play drivers to put up points... Well we got told we were making excuses and wearing rose coloured glasses.

 

Now Jake is by no means out of the woods. He's played well but he needs to show he can keep doing this consistently and - if he's in the NHL - at this level. I'm sure we'll still see hiccups and the naysayers will come out of the woodwork again.

 

 

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1 minute ago, J.R. said:

...because he wasn't scoring.

 

And when some of us said yes, but he's playing well and he's not a play driver and needs to play with play drivers to put up points... Well we got told we were making excuses and wearing rose coloured glasses.

 

Now Jake is by no means out of the woods. He's played well but he needs to show he can keep doing this consistently and - if he's in the NHL - at this level. I'm sure we'll still see hiccups and the naysayers will come out of the woodwork again.

 

 

Summed up quite nicely. +1 (when I'm allowed to again :P)

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