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“If he didn’t have an option, he wasn’t just throwing pucks away in the offensive zone. He learned how to protect a puck, get his head up and make a play.”

Photo by DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS

It’s quite the career ascension.

From an initial sense of entitlement — he cracked the roster in 2015-16 along with fellow rookies Jared McCann and Ben Hutton — to conditioning and consummate pro concerns, the redemption road was rocky. It reached a point last season where Virtanen was at the crossroads in Utica, N.Y.

Green had him on the workout bike morning, noon and night. He drove him so hard that the winger wondered if it was all worth it. He was barely scoring in the AHL — nine goals in 65 games — and it was grating.

Understanding that scoring is a byproduct of doing other things well to make a difference seemed as complicated as calculus.

“I had a couple of thoughts last year,” recalled the 215-pound Virtanen. “I talked to my dad pretty much every day. He told me Hank and Danny (Sedin) went through a lot of stuff when they first came in. They battled through it.

“He told me it was going to be better for me in the long run and it was. I learned a lot. I learned how to treat my body. I only fluctuated two pounds all year and I’ll come in even a couple pounds lighter to camp and be even faster.”

The new Virtanen is a good Virtanen. He easily blows by defenders and even outlegged Connor McDavid in the season finale Saturday.

“That was pretty funny,” he recalled. “He was kind of at the end of a shift and did a good job of reaching under my stick to just get me. But any time you can beat him, that’s nice. I feel like I’ve shown the staff that I belong here and want to be here.”

That wasn’t always the case. But Virtanen was in a different place as a wide-eyed rookie.

“When you’re 19, you just want to go out there and do your thing that you did in junior,” he admitted. “You have to mature a lot quicker than other kids. This is a hard league. It’s hard to make it and hard to stay in it.”

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