The Vancouver Canucks are back on the ice for practice at Rogers Arena this morning.
As I feared, Jannik Hansen is not skating with the group. Hansen was injured—rather mysteriously—in Wednesday's win over Carolina, so we'll have to wait for Coach Willie to offer up a prognosis.
We're also still waiting to hear the Canucks make a definite statement about whether or not Jake Virtanen will remain with the team. Maybe that won't come until after they see how he plays on Saturday against Tampa Bay?
After Team Canada was eliminated at World Juniors last weekend, it was reported that the organization would make a decision whether or not to send Virtanen back to the Calgary Hitmen by the January 10th WHL trade deadline—now two days away.
Since then, the talk has been about easing Virtanen back into the Canucks lineup. As the team gets healthier, sending Virtanen back to junior would certainly get him more ice time, but it seems like the organization is more focused on him "learning to be a pro."
My guess is that he'll stay with the big club for the rest of the season, although Calgary GM Mike Moore is still holding out hope.
As we know, Virtanen has taken his share of heat for his performance in the tournament. Corey Pronman does a good job of evaluating prospects for ESPN. In his post-tournament summary (found
here, but behind a paywall), he's apologetic about "piling on" when he lists Virtanen among his World Junior disappointments.
More impactful to me: he led off that list of disappointments with bronze medallist Brock Boeser of Team USA. I knew Boeser hadn't been a standout, but I hadn't thought he'd be labelled "disappointing."
Pronman's reasoning came from Boeser's strong performances at the summer evaluation camp and through the first half of his freshman season at North Dakota, where he's second on the team with 13 goals in 20 games. In Helsinki, Boeser didn't live up to the high standard that he has already established for himself—and the strong performances of the draft-eligible Finns and Auston Matthews make it tougher to give him a pass due to his age.
Pronman also mentions Boeser's "lack of foot speed," something I hadn't seen mentioned before. He concludes by saying that "I still love him as a legit NHL prospect." Maybe this is a situation where the big European ice surface doesn't bring out the best in Boeser's game?
Julie Robenhymer did a video interview with Boeser for Canucks.com during the tournament.
Can you live with the fact that Boeser is getting used to Chelsea Dagger as his goal song—in North Dakota and now with Team USA?
In other prospect news, congratulations to Hunter Shinkaruk for being named as the Utica Comets' representative at the AHL All-Star Game.
The AHL's All-Star weekend takes place in Syracuse this year. It's on the same weekend as the NHL festivities, but the NHL skills competition runs Saturday January 30th with the 3-on-3 tournament on the 31st, while the AHL will run their skills competition on the 31st and their tournament on Feb. 1.
The format for the AHL All-Star tournament varies slightly from the NHL version, with a hybrid of 4-on-4 and 3-on-3 action rather than straight 3-on-3 play, but the basic structure is the same—a three-game tournament featuring All-Star teams representing each division.
Shinkaruk leads the Comets with 13 goals and 25 points in 27 games in his second AHL season. He had 31 points in 72 games in his rookie year, so he has taken a big step forward.
Other ex-Comets to have cracked the All-Star lineups include Cal O'Reilly, now with Rochester and Dustin Jeffrey of Springfield—the player traded for Cory Conacher at last year's trade deadline. Conacher has 43 points in 36 games with Bern of the Swiss league this season, and was part of Canada's championship team at this year's Spengler Cup, where he finished in a tie with three other Canadian players for the tournament scoring lead, with four points in four games.
A couple of other notes to wrap up today:
• There was some buzz earlier that Emerson Etem wasn't participating in practice with the New York Rangers because a trade was imminent. Now, it seems that Etem has been assigned to the AHL for conditioning: the speedy winger last played on January 2.
When the trade talk was bubbling, Elliotte Friedman drew the connection between Etem and coach Willie Desjardins back in Medicine Hat, but he has now moved back from that idea:
Etem and Carl Hagelin have both seen their fortunes drop since being traded for each other last summer. Etem has just three assists in 19 games, while Hagelin is 3-5-8 in 39 games with the Anaheim Ducks after posting back-to-back 17-goal seasons with the New York Rangers in the two previous seasons.
• Zack Kassian's first big post-rehab interview comes courtesy of Terry Jones of the
Edmonton Sun.
Click here to hear a forthright Kassian talk about his issues with alcohol and his clear understanding that he's treating his current opportunity with the Edmonton Oilers organization has his last chance in the game. It's a good read.
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