Canucks have someone in mind to help avert potential goalie crisis

By all rights, Vancouver Canucks fans should be excited for the season ahead. After all, they're coming off a campaign where they totalled the third-most points in franchise history and won their first division title since 2012-13.

Instead, there are concerns about how the Canucks will begin the 2024-25 regular season. This is specifically tied to the injury situation surrounding their goalie tandem of Thatcher Demko and Arturs Silovs.

Demko is coming off his best season yet, with him eventually finishing second in voting for the Vezina Trophy. Meanwhile, Silovs made a name for himself particularly during the playoffs, leading to the Canucks deciding to let Casey DeSmith leave.

No Demko OR Silovs to begin 2024-25?!

However, the Canucks find themselves in a position where they may well be without either goalie to start the new campaign. Demko's status in particular, is of concern to the team.

As we wrote about earlier in the week, the Canucks' handling of Demko has contributed to making his propensity to be injury-prone, become even worse. As Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported, the goalie's injury can no longer be fixed even with surgery, and he will have to learn to play with it.

As for Silovs, he has been dealing with knee inflammation. As a result, he had to sit out of Team Latvia men’s hockey Olympic qualifying tournament.

Of the two, Demko is clearly the bigger concern, but regardless, the Canucks do need more goalie help. And it seems they have been focused in on one player specifically.

Canucks know who they want

As reported by Patrick Johnston of The Province, the Canucks are apparently interested in free agent Kevin Lankinen. Certainly, he makes for an intriguing option.

Lankinen has had fine if not outstanding statistics during four seasons of NHL hockey. He has a 45-43-12 record in 101 starts, in the process producing a .905 save percentage and 3.07 Goals Against Average (GAA).

In fairness, the 29-year-old has improved his play during his past two seasons, with the Nashville Predators. He has a 20-14-1 record in 35 starts, while recording a .912 save percentage and 2.79 GAA.

Lankinen is well known for helping lead Finland to Gold over Canada in the 2019 IIHF World Championships. He was excellent throughout the tournament, as he produced a .942 save percentage and 1.50 GAA.

The former Chicago Blackhawk would only be a short-term solution, but could still prove to be a positive one. In addition -- for what it's worth -- he has previously worked with Canucks goalie coach Marko Torenius.

Money talks

So what's the hold up? As always, it's all about money.

Consider comments from Chek's Rick Dhaliwal of Donnie and Dahli, on Friday. He said: "They’ve held talks with his agent this week, there just hasn’t been progress. So the Canucks made Lankinen an offer – it’s believed to be under one million dollars – the Canucks could sign Lankinen in 10 seconds, all they got to do is put Tucker Poolman on LTIR to get the deal done, they don’t want to do it. They want to do the Poolman LTIR thing at the trade deadline so they have space there."

As per PuckPedia, the Canucks have cap space of only $190,833 as things stand for the 2024-25 season. As such, you can understand why they want to hold off on placing Poolman on LTIR until and unless it can put them in a better position.

It makes sense if Lankinen wants more, given he earned $2 million last season and $1.5 million a season earlier. However, at some point, surely making around (under) $1 million is better than sitting at home all season?

We'll have to wait, to see how all of this pans out of course. However, at some point push will come to shove for the Canucks when it comes to a resolution, particularly if Demko and Silovs do end up both not being available for the beginning of the regular season.

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