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“He’s further away than he thought,” said Canucks coach Willie Desjardins. “There’s nothing you can do about that and we have to build it up. He didn’t have the speed to get where he wanted to go.”

Virtanen remains a work in progress and concerns that he may be ailing — he has rarely initiated contact — only steepens the learning curve to play a structured game. He has 10 hits in five games, but has yet to collect a point. He played 8:26 Tuesday on the fourth line and had three hits in a 3-0 loss to Ottawa.

“We’ve got to get him back to a point where he’s hungry and motivated,” said Desjardins. “With his talent, he needs to be a top-nine forward for sure and probably a top six — he has the ability to do that. Right now, he’s not at that point.”

Whatever Virtanen is actually experiencing pain-wise only adds to the challenge to keep playing and earn more ice time. He had just four shifts in the third period Tuesday.

“The lines have been changed pretty much every day and you like to have good chemistry with your linemates and with Bo (Horvat) and Baertsch (Sven Baertschi), we do have good chemistry,” said Virtanen. “But when we’re switched around a lot, it’s hard to get going, but I just have to suck it up and play my game every night, but it’s hard to keep it going.

“I’ve got to earn it (ice time), but I want to be an every-shift-kind-of-guy. It’s hard to get going when you’re sitting for so long on the bench and after 10 or 11 minutes, you get back out there. But Willie wanted to win and he played the guys he thought he could win with.”

bkuzma@postmedia.com

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