Vancouver Canucks not alone in goalie injury crisis

With recent news of the Ilya Sorokin injury, the Vancouver Canucks are suddenly not the only team staring in the face of a goalie injury crisis.

Sorokin, 29, suffered an offseason upper-body injury and is expected to miss a few days of training camp, according to New York Islanders general manager Lou Lamoriello, but there's cause to be a little more concerned than that.

NHL insider Elliotte Friedman previously reported that the Islanders goaltender was "battling something", which came on the heels of Sorokin's worst season statistically in a decade. Sorokin was 25-19-12 last season and posted career-lows of a 3.01 GAA and a .908 save percentage, which can be considered NHL average at best.

It's also worth noting that Sorokin has already played north of 200 NHL games, between regular season and playoffs, in just four seasons. That doesn't include more than 300 appearances in the KHL earlier in his career.

After a bad season and injury concerns, the early training camp days that can be used to find a rhythm and "get right", so to speak, are important.

The Canucks very quickly found that they know this better than most. The health status of Arturs Silovs is reportedly up in the air after he was pulled from international duty with Latvia due to a knee injury, and the chronic Thatcher Demko injury amplifies the importance of that tenfold.

Demko and Sorokin have been two of the best goalies in the NHL over the last five years; Demko will have to learn to practice and play a different way, while Sorokin will have to find a way back to the elite form he's maintained almost his entire pro career.

As for Silovs, the Canucks will be down their top goaltending prospect, at least temporarily. Aside from Demko and Silovs? The Canucks don't have anyone else.

Silovs appears to at least be on the mend, but Demko and Sorokin are two big question marks in net heading into the 2024-25 season.