PENTICTON – The mysterious, summer-long injury saga involving goalie Thatcher Demko was always a degree of bad for the Vancouver Canucks.
Even had the Vezina Trophy runner-up been fully fit for the start of training camp here Thursday, there would still be concern about his summer preparation and the physical readiness of a goalie who in four years as a starter in the National Hockey League has yet to survive an entire campaign.
To his credit (and to an extent), Demko filled in many of the missing details Thursday morning when he came off the ice at the South Okanagan Events Centre and insisted on going straight to the media to explain why he hasn’t yet recovered from a playoff injury that was supposed to allow him back in the lineup last May had the Canucks advanced beyond the second round of the Stanley Cup tournament.
Demko told reporters his knee injury – “a muscle injury” – is so rare he can not find any case history for it in hockey. And although he is encouraged by progress over the last two or three weeks and confident he will recover “100 per cent,” he can not say when.
The Canucks’ regular season begins in three weeks.
The five-month anniversary of Demko’s injury is Saturday. And the Canucks don’t know when their star goalie, the only goaltender in the organization who has played at least 20 NHL games, will be available.
For now, Vancouver’s No. 1 goalie is projected backup Arturs Silovs, the 23-year-old, sixth-round draft pick who burst to prominence by winning a bronze medal with Latvia at the 2023 world championships and started the final 10 playoff games for the Canucks last spring.
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“Yeah, I mean, it’s tough,” Demko, 28, said Thursday. “I think missing playoff games last year was definitely the low point in my career, you know, mentally and spiritually. If you had asked me when I was going home for the summer if I’d be ready for camp, I would have said, ‘Yeah, 100 per cent.’ The realization has kind of crept in the back half of the summer that I might not be ready for camp. At the end of the day, that’s what I have to deal with.
“I can’t sit around and think poor me that I’m not out there. Obviously, I want to be out there. I want to be competing with the guys, I want to be leading by example. I want to help the young goalies coming in. I want to be there for Arty and helping him out. But this is the hand that I’m dealing with right now.”
Demko confirmed he had another surgery this summer, but said it was unrelated to the injury he suffered in Game 1 of the playoffs last April. He explained the procedure as largely preventive, described it as “minor” and said it took only two weeks to recover from the operation.
His ongoing injury sounds as complex as his surgery was simple.
“We haven’t found a single hockey player,” Demko said of the injury. “We found maybe less than five soccer guys. It’s just not too concrete.
“It’s been … a little bit of a frustrating summer, just trying to get some answers. Obviously, we’ve talked to all the specialists that we can around the world, in North America and even overseas … and this is the information that we’ve kind of gathered. Myself and the staff and the organization are fully confident that we’re on the right track.
“I did hit a bit of a wall in the summer as far as the recovery went, and we did see a little bit of a lack of progress there for a couple of months. And obviously, that’s why I’m in a situation that I’m in right now. But I would say, you know, in the last probably two or three weeks, we’ve seen a ton of progress. We’re very confident in where I am right now and happy with that.”
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But he can’t say when his next NHL start may be.
“I can’t really give you an answer, to be honest,” Demko said. “Had you asked me a month ago, I really wouldn’t have been able to tell you. I would say that we are on a great trajectory right now. This is the most confident that I’ve been in the rehab process up to date. Hopefully, just keep progressing week to week. I’m not going to sit here and give you a timeline. But, yeah, like I said, I feel really confident in where we’re headed and hopefully I’ll be 100 per cent sooner rather than later.”
Losing veteran backup Casey DeSmith in free agency – after bypassing him in the playoffs in favour of Silovs – Canuck general manager Patrik Allvin signed only minor-league goalie Jiri Patera (eight NHL games) over the summer. Dylan Ferguson (two NHL starts) is at training camp on a tryout.
Management, however, has tracked the NHL goalie market for some time, spoken with veteran Antti Raanta and reportedly offered a contract to free agent Kevin Lankinen.
That the Canucks haven’t yet invested in a potential NHL fill-in for Demko, despite being aware for weeks about his uncertain status, likely indicates a belief within the organization that their starting goalie isn’t far from full health.
Allvin, who declined to speak about Demko’s condition during his pre-camp press conference on Wednesday, instead deferring to Demko and the goalie’s Thursday media availability, emphasized to Sportsnet last weekend that the Canucks want to maintain salary-cap flexibility and not lapse back into Long Term Injured Reserve before the season.
Signing Lankinen or acquiring another NHL goalie could mean exposing a skater or skaters to waivers and burying contracts in the minors.
Getting Demko healthy is only the first priority. Keeping him healthy, given his injury history, is another. And as if the situation weren’t uncomfortable enough, Demko is also trying to form a partnership with new goaltending coach Marco Torenius after goalie guru Ian Clark, who helped build Demko into one of the best netminders in the world, was re-assigned in August.
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Demko spent a month on injured reserve shortly before the playoffs but won 35 of his 51 starts last season while saving 91.8 per cent of shots. The only player more important to the Canucks is Norris Trophy-winning defenceman Quinn Hughes.
“I think I’ll be able to get to 100 per cent,” Demko said. “Again, there’s a lack of research. I don’t know too much about what this looks like, full picture at the end of the whole process. But I have full confidence that I’ll be able to get back to 100 per cent. I’m sure it’ll be a situation, just like anything when you have an injury … you have to keep an eye on and maybe tweak some of your training habits and some of your rehab habits and just stay on top of your maintenance and things like that. But I don’t have any doubt that I’ll be 100 per cent.”
ICE CHIPS – A distant second in opening-day news was coach Rick Tocchet’s training camp deployments. Top prospect Jonathan Lekkerimaki was given a prime spot on right wing beside Elias Pettersson and Jake DeBrusk, while newcomer Danton Heinen skated on the top line with J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser. With winger Dakota Joshua recovering from testicular cancer and centre Teddy Blueger still out after off-season surgery, prospect Aatu Raty centred 20-goal scorers Nils Hoglander and Conor Garland.
