Injured Vancouver Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko needs surgery again
Adam Foote suggested this was a possibility earlier this month.
Now, the Vancouver Canucks have confirmed the worst.
On Tuesday, the Canucks announced that Thatcher Demko will not play for the rest of the NHL season.
As CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal alluded to last week, the latest injury isn’t his knee or his groin, two areas that have been problem areas for him over the last couple of seasons.
This time, it’s his hip giving him issues, as the Canucks announced that he will undergo hip surgery.
The last time Demko had surgery on both hips was over 10 years ago, when he was a Canucks prospect.
The San Diego native had double-hip surgery in April 2015, and he explained the ramifications of playing with the injury prior to having it fixed.
āThere were definitely a lot of limitations,ā he told The Province back in 2016. āItās hard to explain and put into words. But itās not just the hips that hurt. Your back goes out. Your groin starts hurting.”
Fortunately for Demko, he recovered magnificently for his final season of NCAA hockey in 2015-16, where he was a finalist for the Hobey Baker award.
Unfortunately, his early injury troubles were a sign of things to come. Outside of the 2021-22 season where he played 64 games, Demko has endured extended absences in every season.
While his current unavailability might be good for the Canucks draft lottery odds, it’s a grim reminder of the fact that the Vezina runner-up in 2023-24 hasn’t managed to stay healthy for more than two months since March 2024.
Come to think of it, perhaps that wasn’t the only bad omen for the Canucks during that fateful month.
Since Demko went down with a knee injury against the Winnipeg Jets on March 9, 2024, he’s been sidelined on seven different occasions after returning for Game 1 of Round One against the Nashville Predators in April 2024.
With Demko out now for the season, he’ll have played just 44 of a possible 193 games for the Canucks since March 9, 2024, meaning Vancouver’s star netminder has been in the net for just 22 per cent of his team’s contests.