Would the real Jake Virtanen please stand up?
For most of the season, Virtanen has been invisible at best. He had one goal early in the season, a long-distance wristshot that deflected in off a defenceman, and hadn’t had a point since heading into Thursday’s game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
It’s not like he didn’t have opportunities either — he started the season on the top line with Elias Pettersson and Brock Boeser. He found himself sliding down and out of the lineup of his own accord.
Thursday night, however, seemed like a completely different Jake.
It’s not just that he scored two goals, including one where he drove to the net like Canucks fans wish he would do all the time. It’s not just that he was making pretty passes to set up his linemates. It’s not just that he showed some soft hands with the puck, even drawing a penalty off one slick move in the corner.
It’s that Virtanen was doing all of that while also playing smart hockey away from the puck. He backchecked with authority, won puck battles, and was in the right position on breakouts. It was a complete game from Virtanen.
“He was getting places, he was taking the puck, he was playing with authority, he was taking pucks wide and using his speed,” said head coach Travis Green. “And he played in a role where he was playing against the top line. If he can bring that game to the table every night, he's a very effective player in the league. I was happy for him to have a big game tonight for us.
“That's the player that we've envisioned from day one.”
That’s the thing — where has that player been all season? If he played that way every game, even if he didn’t score goals he would be an impactful player.
“I feel like the last couple games I've gotten my confidence back,” said Virtanen. “I felt like I didn't have it as much earlier in the season but I feel it right now. Even in practice, I feel like I've just been handling the puck better, skating a little bit quicker, getting places quicker.”
If only it didn’t take 22 games for it to come together for Virtanen this season.
To top it off, he gave a bonkers first intermission interview where he talked about “Twitter Warriors” and chirped the Leafs, saying, “We know they don’t like playing defence that much.”
As the kids say these days, Virtanen was just vibing. Everyone else was like a third-wave ska band from Florida on Thursday night: less than Jake.
If Virtanen could stop studying the science of selling yourself short and start playing this way consistently, that would be great. Then I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time trying to figure out if that was the real Viirtanen as I watched this game.
- Before getting too excited about this win, it’s worth noting that the Leafs were on the second night of back-to-backs — their third game in four nights — and were playing their backup goaltender, Michael Hutchinson. The Leafs were a tired group and seemed burned out by the third period.
- That said, Hutchinson had a .943 save percentage heading into this game, so it’s not like the Canucks were guaranteed a win against a bad backup. It’s just that Canucks fans should expect a very different Leafs team on Saturday night.
- Pettersson missed Thursday’s game with what Green described as an upper-body injury and is day-to-day. Virtanen evidently saw that he was out of the lineup and said to himself, “Okay, time to be a superstar.”
- Virtanen opened the scoring just three minutes in with a fantastic drive up the left wing. He faked a shot to freeze defenceman Justin Holl, then toe-dragged past him and cut to the net before chipping the puck past Hutchinson, who accidentally knocked it into his own net as he reached back behind him. Honestly, the deception of the fake shot was the most unexpected part of the whole goal, but of course, it being unexpected is sort of the point.
- Shoutout to J.T. Miller’s groin for not giving out on him when he stretched to stay onside.
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- Marc Michaelis made his NHL debut Thursday night, saying after the game that it was, “Something I dreamed about for my entire life.” He had a bit of a rude awakening, however, when he made a bad read while covering for a pinching Quinn Hughes. Michaelis attaacked the puck aggressively — too aggressively — and Pierre Engvall got an inside position on him to get to the net and beat Demko to tie the game 1-1.
- There are times when I watch Tyler Myers play and really want to know what is going through his head. This first period play is one of them, as the puck comes out of the zone and he attempts to pass it to Miller, who is inside the zone. Just, why? And how come? Also, pour quoi? Additionally, wherefore?
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- A while back Virtanen worked with puckhandling coach Pavel Barber to improve that aspect of his game. It hasn’t always shown up, but it did in a big way Thursday night, not just on the toe drag before his first goal, but this slick bit of business in the corner midway through the second period, shaking free of Holl and forcing him to take a tripping penalty.
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- It must be particularly infuriating for Holl that he could be embarrassed twice by Virtanen because he just got a bunch of credit for shutting down Connor McDavid . To play so well against McDavid only to get taken behind the woodshed by Virtanen has to sting.
- As much as Virtanen was the big story, Demko was the real reason the Canucks won. The turning point of the game came midway through the second while on the power play Virtanen drew. Bo Horvat and Miller got their wires crossed at the Leafs’ blue line, turning over the puck to Alex Kerfoot, who broke away 2-on-1 with Ilya Mikheyev against a forward, Brock Boeser. The score was still tied 1-1 — a shorthanded goal would have been absolutely deflating.
- Instead, Demko came up with an enormous pad-stacking save, robbing Mikheyev when Kerfoot sent a surprise pass across to the rushing Russian winger. Demko didn’t just save the puck — he saved the game.
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- “I don’t know, I just did it,” said Demko when asked how he came up with that unorthodox save. “I'm not really thinking in those situations. I thought Kerfoot was gonna come in and take the breakaway look that he had and he ended up pulling up and sliding it across. In those situations, you're just trying to get in front of it and make a save. Just happy it didn't go in.”
- “That was definitely a big save in the game, for sure,” said Green.
- 12 seconds later, the Canucks took a lead they wouldn’t relinquish for the rest of the game. It was a quintessential Virtanen goal: he skated with speed down the wing and took a shot from an absolutely dreadful angle. It wasn’t a lucky goal, by any means — he put it right under the bar, as Hutchinson, like the parents of a young adult that just moved out, left room upstairs.
- With a 2-1 lead heading into the third, the question was whether the Canucks could hang on after giving up so many leads in recent games. Instead of just hanging on, the Canucks thrived, hemming the Leafs in and making their lives a nightmare in the neutral zone.
- “I thought the third was probably our best period of the night,” said Green. “I just like that we stuck with it, we kept skating, we kept pressuring. I thought we made good decisions, not just with the puck, but without the puck, which is an area that we've been talking a lot with our group.”
- The Canucks were buzzing around the offensive zone, but couldn’t get a goal until Horvat did something unexpected: he abandoned the front of the net, bolting to his usual bumper spot on the power play. Alex Edler jumped down the boards with the puck and found Horvat in that soft spot on the ice and his quick shot ramped up a Leafs stick into the top corner, where circle takes the square.
- I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate a sometimes-overlooked aspect of the game: Quinn Hughes keeping the puck in at the offensive blue line. Enjoy these keep-ins — I just think they’re neat.
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- The Canucks weren’t perfect, of course — no team ever is, even in their best games. Miller’s turnover that led to Demko’s pad-stacking save was the most obvious faux pas, but Green mentioned a few more when I asked him.
- “I thought we had a couple moments where we probably should have got a puck behind them,” said Green. “Höglander had one with about 13 seconds left in the second period that I thought should have went deep. There's probably three or four times that we should have probably put pucks behind them, especially with a quick team like that can strip pucks. They've got good sticks, they've got a quick skating team on the back end.”
- Here’s the moment with Höglander at the end of the second that Green mentioned. With an opportunity to get the puck in deep, Höglander instead tries a risky drag move with two Leafs bearing down on him. It doesn’t work, and the Leafs are able to take the puck the other way, which could have led to a deflating tying to goal in the dying seconds of the period.
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- What was great is that Höglander had a redemptive moment in the third period, where he made a simple, safe play at his own blue line to protect the puck along the boards, then make a patient pass to enable a clean breakout. Several players on the Canucks bench immediately exploded with praise, shouting, “Attaboy, Hoggy!” It was delightfully pure.
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- “They like him,” said Green when I asked about the moment. “They also understand that he does make the odd mistake, and we stuck with him, we're trying to teach him. The one in the second, he got a little bit of an earful, and then he made the right play, the smart play, and a lot of times when you make the smart play and the right play, good things happen. I think that's why the bench [reacted] — they realized that was a lesson learned.”
