How confident are you in the Vancouver Canucks’ goaltending tandem heading into the 2023-24 NHL season?
According to former NHL journeyman goaltender (who at one point was a Vancouver Canuck himself) Mike McKenna, the Canucks have the league’s 16th-best tandem. Here is what McKenna listed as some key questions facing the Canucks’ goaltending group of Thatcher Demko, Spencer Martin, and Arturs Silovs:
Key questions: If this season goes poorly for Vancouver, will Demko request a trade? Is he expected to play 60-plus games despite recent injury concerns? Is Silovs capable of being an NHL backup after just one full season of AHL hockey?
Some teams McKenna has ranked ahead of the Canucks are the Calgary Flames (Jacob Markstrom, Dan Vladar, and Dustin Wolf), the Ottawa Senators (Joonas Korpisalo and Anton Forsberg), the Toronto Maple Leafs (Ilya Samsonov, Joseph Woll, and Martin Jones), the Colorado Avalanche (Alexandar Georgiev and Pavel Francouz), and more. You can read the full piece from McKenna over at Daily Faceoff by clicking here.
At 16th, the Canucks are coming in lower than they did on last year’s rankings, where McKenna had Vancouver’s tandem at 11th in the league. Thatcher Demko’s injury-ridden and overall disappointing 2022-23 campaign hurt the team and their ranking heading into 2023-24, as did Spencer Martin’s eventual AHL demotion toward the end of the year.
The Canucks’ goaltending tandem are officially underdogs. If Demko can return to form and Martin can tread water as his backup, or if Arturs Silovs steals the show at some point, the Canucks might be right back in the top half of the league by this time next year when it comes to their goaltending.
How are you feeling about the Canucks’ goaltending heading into this season?
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