It’s kind of hard to see. If you stare at him real close and concentrate, concentrate and concentrate even harder, you still won’t be able to find it.

But it’s there.

Even though it’s invisible, it’s always there. Every shift of every game, every drill in every practice.

Nestled above the No. 7 on the back of his sweater, below his famous surname. Underneath his equipment.

Right there.

Big, scary and relentless, the monster on Jordan Subban’s back is the massive burden of being P.K. Subban’s little brother.

“I can’t run from that,” Subban recently told Canucks.com. “He’s my brother. As long as I play, he’s going to be my brother. I try not to think about it and just do me. Do my own thing out there.”

Right now, Subban’s ‘own thing’ entails working his way towards the NHL, where he hopes to distinguish himself as more than just P.K.’s younger brother. In his first professional season with the Canucks’ affiliate in the American Hockey League, this centres on channeling his boundless energy towards productive aggressive actions rather than counterproductive aggressive mistakes.

Being aggressive, but not too aggressive. It’s a perpetual tug of war.

If the 20-year-old defenceman suppresses the aggressive nature of how he’s always played, he’ll no longer be effective. At the same time, he has to harness his enthusiasm and eagerness to drive the play in his team’s favour, rather than take unnecessary gambles that lead him out of position.

Kind of like P.K. was at the same age, before developing into one of the faces of the NHL and a Norris Trophy-winner with the Montreal Canadiens.

“We don’t want to take away what a player’s strength is,” Comets coach Travis Green said. “We want him to be that offensive defenceman. But there’s a time and a place. With Subby, a lot of it is concentrating on the details of the game.

“He’s working on the simple little play where he’s got to bank it off the wall to get it out of his zone. Or bank it hard enough to get it inside their zone, instead of a soft play where the puck comes back at you.

“Little areas that he’s maybe never had to worry about before.”

With Subban, this is always a challenge. The reason he was deemed promising enough for the Canucks to select in the fourth round of the 2013 NHL Draft was because he possesses rare attributes that are impossible to teach, that are the prototype for what it takes to be a successful puck-moving defenceman in today’s NHL.