Jake Virtanen has all the tools to become a very good hockey player for the Vancouver Canucks. However, seven games into the season, he’s not using any of those tools successfully.
Virtanen stands at 6-foot-1 and weighs in at 229 pounds. Those statistics alone scream big, physical power forward. For the most part, that’s what we’ve seen from Virtanen since he joined the Canucks.
This year, there’s something different. Virtanen isn’t throwing big body checks like we’ve become accustomed to seeing. In the first seven games, there have been only two instances of physicality that are really worth mentioning.