Mystery injury to Vancouver Canucks goalie Demko revealed: report
The injuries have been non-stop for Vancouver Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko this season.
He started the year hurt and has dealt with more ailments along the way, appearing in just 17 games so far this year.
Demko left his most recent start against the Toronto Maple Leafs on February 8, midway through the first period. Head coach Rick Tocchet said post-game he didn’t think it was “that serious,” but Demko has now missed five weeks of action.
Thankfully, as Tocchet confirmed after that game, this was not an aggregation of Demko’s previous knee injury. Instead, CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal confirmed today it’s a groin issue the goalie is dealing with.
Demko has dealt with similar issues before and missed three months of the 2022-23 season with a groin injury.
The good news is that this injury is not expected to be season-ending. The bad news is that Demko needs to get into practice sessions, and at this time of year, those are hard to come by.
“The Canucks schedule is not helping. Demko needs full team practices before he plays games. When you have back-to-backs, you’ve got to take the third day off, so there’s not much time for practices,” Dhaliwal explained on Halford & Brough.
“He could be a few days away… we don’t know when he’s going to be back.”
The Canucks schedule has been very compact. They played on Tuesday and Wednesday and have another set of back-to-back games this upcoming weekend against Chicago and Utah. That leaves virtually no time for Demko to practice fully with the team.
With Demko out of the lineup, the Canucks have turned to Kevin Lankinen again, as they have done so often throughout this season. Lankinen started the team’s back-to-back games earlier this week, helping the Canucks earn a massive win over the Calgary Flames.
The Canucks are in the thick of a playoff race. They’d love to have their franchise goalie back on the ice, but he needs practice time to get there, and that’s not something they have a ton of right now. Lankinen has been holding down the fort, and they’ll need him to keep doing that to ensure Demko can fully recover for his comeback.