The situation is changing at a fast and furious pace when it comes to the crease of the Vancouver Canucks.
Actually, it’s moving faster than we can even type.
Just a day or so ago, we wrote about the likelihood of Vancouver trading pending UFA Kevin Lankinen and – while we admit the possibility of a good return is tempting – we found that the odds were pretty low due to Thatcher Demko’s ongoing injury and the Canucks’ ongoing intention of making the playoffs.
Instead, we pitched the idea of extending Lankinen, even with Demko still in the fold, and then perhaps sorting it all out during the offseason.
Just hours after hitting ‘publish,’ we learned that extension negotiations were in fact ongoing…just not going on well. Rick Dhaliwal reported that Lankinen and his camp had rejected the latest Canucks’ offer, said to be north of $3 million per season, but no concrete details were available.
So, we wrote up this article, based on what felt like the extreme likelihood of Lankinen eventually signing a contract. And seconds before we hit publish, we got news that Lankinen had, in fact, signed a five-year, $4.5 million AAV extension with the Canucks.
Thankfully, it wasn’t that hard to update, because the general premise remains the same: wondering what the plan might be for Demko beyond this season.
Demko, as most know, is still signed to a contract with a $5 million AAV for the remainder of this season and the 2025/26 season, and then he is set to become an unrestricted free agent. His deal notably does not have any trade protection on it, which makes it a bit of a rarity among major Canuck contracts.
Demko is 29 and will turn 30 at two months into next season. As of right now, he’s played exactly 100 cumulative games over the past three seasons.
That limited availability is essentially the only reason we’re even speculating about Demko’s future. When he’s at his best, he’s one of the best goaltenders in the NHL, hands down. He was nominated for the Vezina Trophy last season despite injuries keeping him to just 51 starts. It was his third campaign with a save-percentage of .915 or higher.
But it’s not just that Demko gets injured so frequently that is at issue. It’s that he gets injured so frequently and for so long, that he’s now rarely ‘at his best.’ After missing more than half a year of action with his latest popliteus trouble, Demko took a good long while to shake the rust of this season. At times, he looked borderline unplayable. He slowly but surely rounded into form, and was just starting to look like the Demko of old prior to the 4 Nations Face-Off break…only to become injured again. He’s now out week-to-week, meaning until the Trade Deadline, which makes for supremely awkward timing.
It is certainly hoped that Demko will be able to pick up where he left off when he returns. But it’s far from a guarantee. Which is why we wrote about the need to hold onto Lankinen, even if that meant he walked for free as a UFA at the end of the year. Obviously, that’s no longer a factor, but it is probably part of the reason why GM Patrik Allvin and Co. made this decision to extend Lankinen.
These years are crucial for the Canucks as a franchise. They’ve never had a player better than Quinn Hughes, and he’s in his prime right now, and that cannot be squandered. The Quinn Hughes Competitive Window ™ is real, and it’s open, and…it probably precludes the Canucks from putting all their 2025/26 eggs in a Demko-shaped basket. A basket that constantly breaks seems like a terrible place to put eggs.
So, assuming the Canucks can get Lankinen extended to reasonable terms (which is now an excessively safe assumption, because it just happened), they will be faced with a choice this offseason: trade Demko, or maintain an expensive veteran goaltending duo for at least one more year.
Trading Demko would probably be relatively straightforward. There are always teams who enter and exit the offseason not yet satisfied with their goaltending options, and the summer of 2025 will be no exception. There will be more money to throw around, thanks to the increasing cap ceiling, but there will not be extra goalies on hand.
Demko’s salary now makes him underpaid for a starting goalie. There will be teams that see him as an upgrade, and while those injury concerns would follow him out of Vancouver, there are also plenty of teams who don’t see their situation as quite so desperately immediate as do the Canucks. In other words, there are probably at least a handful of teams that would be happy to take a risk on Demko, especially if they could acquire him without breaking the bank.
That’s option one.
Option two is continuing to employ a Demko-Lankinen (or a Lankinen-Demko) tandem for 2025/26.
The appeal in terms of performance is obvious. Lankinen has been a revelation for the Canucks this year, and that follows two exceptional years of backing up Juuse Saros in Nashville. This is a goalie who can effectively operate in a tandem, and who can give his team a chance to win on a nightly basis regardless of his deployment. Demko, meanwhile, is an even better goalie when injuries are not impacting him. A healthy Demko and Lankinen are among the best, if not the best, goaltending duo in hockey right now, and would continue to be so into 2025/26.
But it’s the ‘not healthy’ side of things that holds even more appeal. Keeping both Lankinen and Demko would allow the Canucks to get all the benefits of Demko’s potential for greatness, without having to rely upon his health at any point. It’s what they’ve had going for them this season, and it’s worked. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?
The major problem comes with the cost. Let’s imagine that Lankinen will require a salary in the neighbourhood of $4 million in order to stay in Vancouver. Actually, scratch that earlier estimate. Let’s instead imagine that Lankinen DID sign an extension with an average salary of $4.5 million, because that’s what actually happened. That would mean the Canucks are paying $9.5 million for their crease in 2025/26 for both Demko and Lankinen, and that’s a lot.
Sure, there will be more cap space available. But that doesn’t mean the Canucks can afford to spend it willy-nilly, and cap space is rarely best spent on a position that only allows one person to play at a time.
Then again, $9.5 million isn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things. Four different goalies make as much or more than that singlehandedly, and almost half the teams in the NHL already spend about that much or more on their netminding. It’s really not that outlandish. It’s closer to the league average than anything. And that league average is going up in concert with the cap.
The Canucks can also probably count on at least a few ELCs being on their books for next season. The second Elias Pettersson seems to have won himself a permanent spot, and most are expecting Tom Willander to join him on the Vancouver blueline soon enough. Jonathan Lekkerimäki is increasingly penciling himself into next year’s top-six, and Aatu Räty should get a shot at replacing some of the centre depth the Canucks have lost this year. Those are four cheap contracts that will leave space elsewhere in 2025/26, and maybe that cash is redirected into keeping both goalies around.
On that note, we’ve got to mention that although Arturs Silovs has rebounded well enough in Abbotsford, no one wants to go into next season with him as the de facto backup. That means that, if it’s Demko OR Lankinen as starter, they’ll still need to sign a quality backup to support them, and that will cost money, especially with the inflation that is coming this summer. Why not stick with the quality already on hand?
The cons to keeping both Demko and Lankinen are the cost (which isn’t too out of line with overall goaltending costs in the modern NHL), the lost opportunity to spend that cash elsewhere, and the lost potential return for trading Demko (which might not be that considerable, given what goalies usually go for).
The pros are giving the Canucks a better overall chance of winning in 2025/26, and that’s really all that needs to be said about it. That’s why we won’t be surprised at all to see both Demko and Lankinen still sharing the crease next season.
Especially now that they’re both under contract.
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