- Henrik Sedin put a rough target on Thatcher Demko’s return from hip surgery
- Kevin Lankinen gets the net to open the season, with Leevi Merilainen now in the mix
- Read below for Sedin’s comments and the video of the full interview
The Canucks finally put something close to a date on Thatcher Demko.
Co-president of hockey operations Henrik Sedin said Monday the goal is to have Demko back before Christmas. Sedin was asked about the goalie’s recovery from January hip surgery during an appearance on the Halford and Brough show.
“He won’t be ready early on, but our goal is to get him back before Christmas,” Sedin said. “There’s no timeline for that, but he’s taking steps every day. He’s got a great attitude, and we want to make sure that he’s 100 percent before he comes back, and that’s been our mindset from Day 1.”
Catch the full Halford and Brough episode with Sedin here:
That’s a shift in tone. Vancouver spent all of camp insisting there was no timeline for Demko’s return, and general manager Ryan Johnson repeated that line as recently as Friday.
“It sounds like a broken record, but we just are taking the correct steps with Thatcher to do this once and one time only,” Johnson said.
His season ended after his last start on Jan. 10. The 30-year-old went 8-10-1 with a 2.90 goals-against average and an .897 save percentage in 20 games before having surgery he later described as a “drastic measure.”
Injuries have followed Demko ever since he finished as a Vezina Trophy finalist in 2023-24. He’s played just 43 games over the last two seasons. At his end-of-season media availability in April, he explained what had been going wrong.
“The last two years, I was playing with zero degrees of internal rotation in my hip,” Demko said. “So, everything above and below is going to take the hit. It’s the back, it’s the knees, the groin, everything is trying to do too much work.”
Kevin Lankinen is expected to start the opener Tuesday in Edmonton and again Thursday when the Oilers visit Vancouver. The Canucks also claimed Leevi Merilainen off waivers from Ottawa on Friday, and the 24-year-old joined practice for the first time Monday.
Head coach Manny Malhotra was asked whether Merilainen could play during this weekend’s back-to-back against Calgary and Vegas. He said that call sits mostly with goalie coach Marko Torenius, since it’s a lot to ask a new guy to learn the system in a day.
Watch Merilainen and Malhotra after Monday’s practice:
Demko has 134 wins, a 2.81 GAA and a .909 save percentage in 262 career games, all with Vancouver. If the Christmas target holds, he’d return around the halfway point of the season.
