One Burning Question: Can the Vancouver Canucks Goaltending Hold Up?

The summer is here for the NHL, and the dog days of the offseason are here. Outside of the major news of the last couple of days. Full Press Hockey spoke with Rob Simpson of VancouverHockeyInsider.com to look at the Vancouver Canucks on a recent episode of the podcast, and we asked him what the one burning question is facing the Canucks this upcoming season.

Simpson’s response was simple: the biggest question facing the Vancouver Canucks is simple can the goaltenders for the Canucks, especially Thatcher Demko, stay healthy.

The Vancouver Canucks made the playoffs for the first time since they were in the bubble playoffs of 2020 in Edmonton and Toronto. A big reason why the Canucks went to the second round of the playoffs that year was Thatcher Demko. That season, he picked up the name “Bubble Demko” for how he played in the playoffs.

Since that run, Demko has dealt with injuries that have cost the Vancouver Canucks from making the playoffs and making a deeper run in the playoffs. Demko suffered multiple injuries, including in Game 1 of the first round of the playoffs against the Nashville Predators. That injury saw Demko miss the next 13 games.

Arturs Silovs stepped in and played well. He was rewarded in the offseason with a new contract. But this raises questions about the health of Vancouver’s number one goaltender, especially with the uncertainty about whether Demko will be ready for the start of the season.

“I’ve always liked Silvos. I’ve seen him since you showed up. I was covering the training camp when I think when he first got here, and I’ve always liked him, and he was sound, but again, limited experience, limited track record,” Simpson told Full Press Hockey. “You have to be a little bit careful. And Then it raises a question about Demko and his health because there seems to be almost a chronic thing going on now, whether it’s growing knee, let’s call it lower body, that’s a big issue.”

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As Simpson noted when he spoke to the game’s legends, the game’s name should be changed to goalie. As the old saying goes, you have none if you have more than one. Or if you don’t have a goaltender, your team is, you know what.

And for the Canucks the biggest question right facing this team is do they have confidence in the tandem given the health of Demko.

“Yeah. I mean, I would just raise the two questions that I brought up right off the top because it is the most important position, and that is, Can Silovs keep it going?” Simpson said. “I mean, he should be able to. I mean, based on his kind of development track, one would have confidence. He doesn’t seem like a flash-in-the-pan guy. But in the Demko situation, it just raised the same issue again: just how nagging or how chronic, or how potentially costly could this or the other thing lower body be for him? Because it is now indubitably reoccurring.”

These injuries are showing up at very bad times for the Canucks. So the biggest question facing the Vancouver Canucks is the health of Thatcher Demko. But to piggyback off that, they have a second one, and can Arturs Silovs keep it going?