In the 2017-18 season, Jake Virtanen showed flashes of the player he could become. Every once in a while his blazing speed would help him go coast-to-coast, his accurate wrist shot would find twine, or he’d find his way to the front of the net with his size and strength.
The only issue is that those flashes were too few and far between. With some more consistency and opportunity, however, it stands to reason that Virtanen could have a breakout season.
If you look at social media (or even just the PITB comment section), there’s clearly a contingent of Canucks fans that think Virtanen could be a big contributor next season. It’s understandable: the Sedins have retired, so there’s a chance for Virtanen to earn some top-six and power play ice time. If he can figure his game out, he has the skill set to make it happen.
How likely is that to happen? That’s hard to say. Virtanen is just 21, turning 22 in a month, which is an age where players can take big leaps forward in their development.
So let’s look at players who had a similar season to Virtanen at 21 and how they performed the following season. I did a similar thing with Nikolay Goldobin last week. So, using Hockey Reference, I looked for players who came close to scoring 10 goals and 20 points in 75 games like Virtanen. That produced a list of 8 players.
That’s a pretty intriguing list. A positive element is that none of those players became a true bust — an unlikely result for Virtanen, but one worth considering — and some of the players on the list became true stars.
Olli Jokinen obviously had a strong career, with a career-high 39-goal, 91-point season in 2006-07. Brian Sutter became a consistent 30+ goalscorer with the St Louis Blues, who retired his number. Adam Graves had a 52-goal season.
At 21, each of those players had a similar season to Virtanen.
There are some lesser comparables as well, like Brad Richardson, Shean Donovan, and Jason Wiemer, for instance, did not become top-six forwards. But even they had some good seasons. Richardson and Wiemer both had a 31-point season, while Donovan had a surprising 18-goal, 42-point season in 2003-04 with the Flames, an anomaly in his career.
But what’s notable is that, apart from Sutter, even the impressive comparable players on this list didn’t have a breakout season at 22. In fact, all of the comparable players but Sutter had a similar or worse season at 22 than they had at 21.
Every player and situation is unique, so these comparable players certainly don’t constrain Virtanen, but they should, perhaps, constrain our expectations for next season.
It shouldn’t be surprising to see Virtanen score a similar number of goals — my projection suggested ~12 goals if he plays a full 82 games — with around 20-25 points.
The upshot is that even if Virtanen does have a mediocre season, it doesn’t mean he won’t breakout in the future and become the player the Canucks hoped he would become when they drafted him 6th overall in 2014. Perhaps he won’t be as good as Jokinen, Graves, or Sutter, but he could still have a future as a top-six forward.
