Of course, all of the above paragraph is a complete fabrication when it comes to the roster that Holland is assembling for another training camp after another disappointing finish to the season in the Alberta capital. Things were only made more confusing when Holland announced that the Oilers would be opening camp with two players on PTO contracts in defenceman Jason Demers and forward Jake Virtanen.
While the former in Demers is easier to explain - the Oilers simply don't have any defence-first defenders - the latter in Virtanen is much, much harder to explain when one looks at recent history. I'm not even bringing up the not-guilty verdict found in the alleged sexual assault case against Virtanen, but that will get some consideration below. Instead, let's take a look at Virtanen's body of work as a player to try and figure out this mess of a roster decision.
Virtanen took his game to the KHL where he signed a one-year deal with Moscow Spartak. He wouldn't finish the season there, though, after the team terminated his deal due to a "breach of contract". That was never expanded upon in terms of what part of the contract he breached, but we should remember that the KHL might be a slightly-better version of the AHL considering the talent playing there. Virtanen's final KHL numbers saw him post nine goals and seven assists in 36 games which, surprisingly, only put him four goals back of team leader Emil Pettersson.
If the KHL is similar to the talent seen in the AHL, though, scoring at a 0.444 points-per-game rate doesn't bode well for NHL rinks. While I generally dismiss plus/minus as well, the fact that he was -5 on a team where most players were on the positive side of the ledger doesn't speak volumes about his defensive game either. In short, a poor scorer statistically and a poor defensive player was the impression Virtanen left with Russian fans.
Maybe he simply couldn't settle into Russian life, though, so we should cut him some slack. After all, he spent parts of six seasons with the Vancouver Canucks where he was seen as part of their future after the Canucks selected him sixth-overall in 2014. The only problem with that argument is that the math still isn't in Virtanen's favour as he played 317 NHL games with Vancouver where he scored 55 goals and added 37 helpers - a 0.290 points-per-game rate in the NHL. He was a plus-player just once in his six seasons with Vancouver, and that was in 2016-17 when he played just ten games at the NHL - hardly numbers you'd bring in for a look if you were serious about improving your team.
Most pundits have Virtanen starting in the bottom-six forwards if he were to make the team. Not to call out every one of those scribes, but if he started anywhere but the fourth line you'd have Oilers fans calling for your heads. For eight minutes per night, the Oilers might be willing to give him a shot to make them better, but they're honestly casting empty wishes based upon past performances. There is no chance that Virtanen will ever match his career-highs of 18 goals and 36 points ever again, and his defensive game is atrocious.
In other words, he's a much cheaper Zach Kassian, a player already deemed expendable but Holland's group who was traded out of Edmonton at this summer's draft. In saying that, the question of why Virtanen was brought into Edmonton remains.
The other side of the coin is the allegation of sexual assault that follows Virtanen wherever he goes. In a world where Hockey Canada has come until intense scrutiny for its handling of sexual assault and sexual misconduct allegations, the fact that Edmonton decided to put on-ice success over human decency when it comes to the optics of signing Virtanen can't be overstated. I'm not saying that the guy at the top in Bob Nicholson needed to sign off on Holland's decision, but having Nicholson tied to this due to his employment with the Oilers and Virtanen being a player in the Hockey Canada system while Nicholson was running the show makes this signing even harder to explain in a positive light.
"Well, it speaks to me that the Oilers are sending a message that they are taking the verdict at face value, regardless of what the allegations were — which were very, very serious — and just sweeping it under the carpet like they did at Hockey Canada in 2003, and again in 2018, and it's really, really disappointing," Mary Jane James, CEO of the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton told The Canadian Press.
"It is sending a horrible message to our community of what they prioritize. They prioritize their chances of having a successful team over the horrible message of having someone on their team who's been accused of such a horrific crime."
Look, the Oilers have never been one to shy away from players with issues. Evander Kane's signing in Edmonton sparked controversy considering his past, but I'll give the winger credit in that he scored goals, kept himself out of trouble, and worked well among the high-flying Oilers. No one is letting Kane escape his past, but the winger is doing his best, as far as we can tell, to prevent any further tarnish from appearing.
Kane, however, is a different animal than Virtanen, and this is where the comparisons end between the two. Virtanen will likely be a career bottom-six player for however long he finds his way into NHL camps. Any upside he was thought to have when the Canucks drafted him in 2014 was clearly more hype than reality, and it will take a small set of miracles for the 26 year-old to become a 30-goal scorer at this point regardless of where he plays in the Oilers' lineup.
The irony is that Ken Holland's new nickname might be "Second Chance" with his using the term when he signed Kane and when he spoke to Rob Simpson, stating, "You've gotta believe in the legal system, the jury found him not guilty, we'll see where he’s at, and like you said, you give someone a second opportunity, he's trying to his life back together."
If the Oilers want to be a stepping stone for troubled players to find their way in hockey, that's their prerogative. The NHL is a business that's built on winning, not on image rehabilitation and public relations. The Oilers have the greatest hockey player on the planet playing for them in Connor McDavid, and one has to wonder how long he'll be willing to go along with towing the company line if the wins don't start appearing on his resumé. He hasn't reached those heights yet, and I'm not sure he will with the cast of characters he has around him at the moment.
Jake Virtanen joining the Oilers doesn't make them better. They'd be wise to remember that as McDavid's contract gets closer to ending because if he truly does want to leave, there will be no second chances for Ken Holland in that scenario.
Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!
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