The Vancouver Canucks are undefeated in 2025.
That’s the good news.
And that’s the sentence that lets you know there’s bad news. No one ever says, “That’s the good news” and then leaves it at that, which is a shame. It would be nice if every now and then someone lifted you up with a positive story and said, “That’s the good news,” and then didn’t follow it up with any bad news to bring you back down.
But this is the Canucks we’re talking about. Of course, there’s bad news. The Canucks are not in the business of delivering unmitigated good news. They always bring the mitigation. Unmitigated mitigation.
Halfway through Thursday’s game against the Seattle Kraken, Thatcher Demko exited the ice and did not return.
It was emotional whiplash for Canucks fans, as it came directly after a beautiful goal by Conor Garland. It was almost comical how the moment was so completely undercut.
“As [Garland] makes that fake to the forehand,” said colour commentator Ray Ferraro, describing the instant replay of the goal, “he’s able to hold it around the left pad of Grubauer and the Canucks have a 2-1 lead. Demko is gone out of the Canucks net.”
It was that immediate.
Theories immediately sprung up in Demko’s absence. For instance, after the last save that Demko made in the game (turning aside one of approximately 47 Oliver Bjorkstrand breakaways), he seemed to fail to push off his left skate and then looked uncomfortable getting back up.
Sportsnet replayed a moment late in the first period where defenceman Noah Juulsen accidentally skated into Demko, knocking him awkwardly to the ice. As he got up, Demko appeared to reach for the back of his left knee.
For what it’s worth, Demko’s bizarre popliteus injury happened to be to his left knee.
After the game, head coach Rick Tocchet downplayed Demko’s departure and said it wasn’t his knee at all.
“He had some back spasms,” said Tocchet. “So, I don’t think it’s serious but, you know the way back spasms are, it could be a day or two, I’m not sure.”
The unexpected circumstances forced Kevin Lankinen into the net, which isn’t ideal given he’ll be starting Friday night on the second half of back-to-backs. For Lankinen, it was tough to see his fellow goaltender leave the game.
“It was really unfortunate,” said Lankinen. “I don’t know what happened there, I haven’t talked to him after the game, but hopefully, it’s nothing serious. I think he’s done a tremendous job pushing himself to come back after a long break, so I wish him all the best, gotta hope it’s nothing bad.”
Ah yes, the motto of Canucks fans around the world: gotta hope it’s nothing bad. It was a bit of good and a bit of bad when I watched this game.
- Demko got off to a bad start in the first period, allowing a weak goal on just the second shot he faced. In his defence, Chandler Stephenson’s shot took a slight deflection off Vincent Desharnais’s stick, so when Demko flashed out his blocker to punch the puck away, it instead tipped off the inside of his blocker and under his arm. In his offence, he’s really got to stop that puck.
- Demko bounced back, however, and stopped every other shot he faced. You could call him Mr. Bucket (he’s buckets of fun) for the way he repeatedly bailed out the skaters in front of him. Ideally, the Canucks would turn the puck over less and give up fewer odd-man rushes and breakaways, but at least Demko was there for half of the game.
- Guillaume Brisebois got into his first NHL game in nearly two years after missing significant amounts of time with concussion-related issues and was solid in 15:31 of ice time. He had to get settled in quickly, as his defence partner, Tyler Myers, got caught on a bad pinch just a couple of minutes into the game, but Brisebois perfectly handled the resultant 2-on-1, maintaining the ideal gap to get his stick in the passing lane to pick off the puck.
- The Canucks tied the game on a set play off an offensive zone faceoff. Danton Heinen and Max Sasson combined to win the faceoff and bump the puck back to Carson Soucy, who went D-to-D to Noah Juulsen. Meanwhile, Nils Höglander swooped around the net to the opposite side of the ice to take Juulsen’s pass. The rotation and chaos left Heinen wide open at the backdoor, waiting for a rebound from Höglander’s shot. Instead, the puck deflected off a Kraken skater in front, hit Heinen’s foot, and went right to Sasson at the top of the crease, who banged the puck into the net.
- It was part of an excellent game for that line, particularly Höglander, who consistently provided energy like a battle in Pokémon TCG Pocket. He was only credited with one hit, which honestly seems like nonsense, as he was constantly harrying the Kraken on the forecheck.
- “I thought Höglander played well for us, the Sasson line,” said Tocchet. “That line was good for us — Sass was good — especially early. We weren’t ready, we had a couple of bad shifts, and they went out there, they had two big shifts for us, and they get the goal for us. I’ve got to credit them for the win tonight. That was a big goal for us.”
- Conor Garland had an outstanding game and gave the Canucks a 2-1 lead. Derek Forbort poked a puck off the stick of Jaden Schwartz to Phil Di Giuseppe, who sent Garland in on a breakaway. He sold the deke to the backhand for pennies on the dollar to send Phillipp Grubauer sprawling and tucked the puck in on the forehand.
- The deke was nice but my favourite part of the goal was Forbort pointing out the wide-open Garland to Di Giuseppe by jabbing towards Garland with his stick. Di Giuseppe got credit for the “heads-up play” by Ray Ferraro, but it was Forbort going, “There, do you see it? Tell me you see it,” that directed Di Giuseppe where to pass it. So really, Forbort had two points on the goal.
- That’s when Demko left the game and Lankinen came in. It might have been nice if the Canucks helped ease Lankinen into the game — instead, he was immediately called upon to make a couple of huge saves in his first couple of minutes. First, he robbed Brandon Montour on a slap shot from the right faceoff dot, then slid to his right to kick aside a Bjorkstrand one-timer.
- “Maybe it’s not optimal but I see it as a good challenge,” said Lankinen to Sportsnet’s Dan Murphy. “It’s not the first time in my career that I’ve been in that situation. I think that’s why you prepare all day. You do your thing in the morning, you warm up, you’re engaged because you never know what’s going to happen, right? That’s part of being a goalie.”
- The Canucks responded to Lankinen’s brilliant entrance with a dominant sequence in the offensive zone, with Garland leading the way. They hemmed the Kraken in so completely that defenceman Jamie Oleksiak ended up stuck on the ice for over four minutes — 4:12, to be exact — while they created multiple chances. They were unlucky not to come up with a goal and arguably should have drawn at least one penalty, as Oleksiak crosschecked Pius Suter to the ice with no call. It was one of the Canucks’ best sequences of the season.
- That dominant shift didn’t lead to a goal but they finally made it 3-1 in the third period. Brock Boeser battled hard on the boards and kicked the puck out to Jake DeBrusk, who quickly fed the puck down low to J.T. Miller. He spotted Tyler Myers skating down Main Street and the chaotic one went past the blocker like Mike Wakefield.
- The Canucks had a two-goal lead midway through the third period, so you know what that means: they coughed it up. It started with a power play goal from Matty Beniers, whose quick shot from the bumper deflected off Teddy Blueger’s stick into the top shelf over Lankinen.
- It was a strange game for J.T. Miller, who assisted on a key goal and — spoiler warning! — scored the shootout winner, but also took a terrible penalty that led to the Kraken’s second goal and ultimately barely played. Despite the game going into overtime, Miller played just 15:41 total, which was seventh among Canucks forwards, and was dead last on the Canucks in 5-on-5 ice time at just 10:01.
- Sorry, I just have to unpack Miller’s ice time for a moment, because it’s bizarre he played so little with Elias Pettersson still out of the lineup. Before overtime, Miller played just 13:45 in regulation. Yes, he was in the penalty box a couple of times, but he played just 3:34 in the third period — a single penalty doesn’t explain that.
- The Kraken tied up the game in the final minute of regulation at 6-on-5 with their net empty. It was a shot that Lankinen never saw, as he had three Canucks skaters in his eyeline preventing him from seeing Vince Dunn’s shot. Why bother setting a screen when the other team does it for you?
- Perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising that J.T. Miller didn’t start overtime after his recent misadventures in the extra frame but it still caught me off-guard when Suter and Garland took the ice for the first shift. Suter even won the faceoff to get possession right off the hop, only for Myers to turn the puck over with a pass to Suter when he wasn’t looking.
- The most unexpected player to step over the boards in overtime was Vincent Desharnais, who has one (1) goal and 18 assists in his 139-game career. Even more unexpectedly, he helped create the Canucks’ best chance with a great cross-ice pass to Jake DeBrusk, who sent Grubauer sprawling to the ice before centring to Teddy Blueger for a wide-open net only for André Burakovsky to kick the puck aside.
- Lankinen stopped all three shots he faced in the shootout — or forced them wide — and Miller scored the only goal the Canucks needed. It was a classic Miller move, as he swung out wide to the left and cut slowly into the slot, forcing Grubauer to make micro-adjustments to his stance, then snapped the puck under Grubauer’s glove.
- “Don’t think,” said Lankinen about his mindset in such a tight game. “Nothing’s really going through my mind. That’s the ultimate goal: being in the zone. Nothing really bugs you, nothing really bothers you; you’re just focused and in the present moment. So, whatever happens just happens and you keep moving forward.”
- Once Lankinen is done with his career, I feel like the reader should become a writer: Zen and the Art of Being a Goaltender.
