The Canucks need Jake Virtanen to be a top-six forward

Love it or hate it, the Vancouver Canucks are banking on Jake Virtanen to be a legitimate top-six forward. He’s looking at getting a real opportunity next year.

The Vancouver Canucks need Jake Virtanen to play a much bigger role on the team next season.

It’s been eight days since the opening of free agency and for the most part, it appears that Jim Benning and the Canucks have done what they can to secure their forward group for next year. Defence and goaltending were the focus as Vancouver’s general manager showed little interest in re-signing Tyler Toffoli before losing him to the Montreal Canadiens.

When it came to finding new forwards to fill the hole, instead of turning to the open market Benning looked for internal help. He qualified Virtanen and he re-signed both Tyler Motte and Zack MacEwen to cheap multi-year deals. Clearly, regardless of how the team got here, Canucks management has decided to put the chequebook away and give their younger players a real chance to rise to the occasion and make that next step in the NHL.

Whether he’s ready for it or not, “Shotgun Jake” will get a real chance to be a top-six forward at the start of next season. With Toffoli out of the picture and Josh Leivo yet to be re-signed, on the right-wing Virtanen is next in line behind Brock Boeser. Although he failed to impress in his first NHL Playoffs appearance this year, he had a career-year scoring 18 goals and he was on pace for 40+ points before the regular season was cut short.

"“Jake Virtanen is a player that we’ve drafted, we’ve developed, we’ve spent a lot of time with,” GM Jim Benning told reporters. “We think he’s going to be a consistent 20-goal scorer for us moving forward. There’s been some growing pains along the way, as there is with lots of good young players. We’re going to try to figure out a contract for Jake and bring him back next year.”"

Both sides want to get a new contract signed before his arbitration date on October 28th, but Virtanen is in line for a hefty raise either way. Experts say he could be make roughly $3 million annually. The Canucks could have decided not to qualify Virtanen and instead re-sign Toffoli, but that never happened, so cleary Vancouver still has faith in the 24-year-old local.

With the Canucks being somewhat tight to the salary cap, unless they find a way to move money off the books, it looks like this could be it when it comes to tinkering with the team’s forward group. Vancouver is still searching for help, but I wouldn’t expect them to land a top-six forward in free agency. Right now, the team is focused on finding help for the blueline.

So this is it, Jake. This is your chance to become a legit top-six NHLer. What do you think Canucks Nation? Is Vancouver going to give Virtanen a real shot to crack the top-six next season or will Benning find a way to bring in somebody else?