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Is the Canucks’ brutal schedule finally having an affect their goalies?
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Published Nov 07, 2025 • Last updated 1 day ago • 3 minute read
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The Canucks have called up Jiri Patera from Abbotsford just to give Thatcher Demko and Kevin Lankinen a little more rest. Photo by Ethan Cairns /THE CANADIAN PRESSArticle content
The Vancouver Canucks’ brutal schedule to open the season is coming home to roost: they’ve called up a goalie just to give Thatcher Demko a little more rest.
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Demko was absent from Friday’s practice at Rogers Arena, a day before the team hosts the Columbus Blue Jackets. With Saturday’s game looming, then a game Sunday as well against the Colorado Avalanche, and some doubt about whether Demko would be ready to play in either game, the Canucks called up Jiri Patera under emergency conditions from AHL Abbotsford.
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Obviously when Demko and “absent-from-practice” end up in the same sentence, you get concerned. Given he hasn’t played since Monday in Nashville, and the Canucks had a day off on Thursday, it’s understandable why people are quickly going “oh boy here we go again.”
Canucks head coach Adam Foote said after practice that this was a case of a player who is in the midst of a very busy schedule needing some extra recovery time.
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“We asked him this summer and we had a conversation with him to take care of himself, and know in a condensed schedule when he feels he needs a little bit of time off, and that’s what he’s doing,” Foote said.
“He’s such a great leader that he doesn’t want to ever miss a day. Even his teammates in the summer in the leadership meetings were like, one thing we always talked about was, ‘Demmer, you got to know when to go and take care of you in a certain situation.’ He’s doing what we asked him to do, and I like that.”
But whether Demko will be available for either game this weekend isn’t known and thus the Patera recall.
Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin seemed to feel Demko would play this weekend but noted that if they were to need Patera on Saturday, it might have been difficult to get him to Vancouver on time — Abbotsford is in Colorado for a pair of games this weekend — if they had waited until Saturday to make the roster move.
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Patera wasn’t in Vancouver in time for Friday’s practice, so Alex Kotia, an Abbotsford mortgage broker who has served as the Canucks’ organizational practice goalie the last two seasons, stood in the net opposite Kevin Lankinen.
There was a time when the No. 1 goalie was a workhorse, playing 60 or more games in a season. That kind of workload just isn’t feasible anymore. Some NHL teams have been running with three goalies this year to lessen the load. Heck, Seattle’s Joey Daccord has yet to sit on the bench as a backup this season — if he hasn’t started for the Kraken he’s been a scratch, with either Matt Murray or Philip Grubauer serving as the backup to the other backup.
What the Canucks are doing may just be a dramatic version of it. But skepticism, given Demko’s injury history, is understandable.
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Patera, for the record, was signed by the Canucks before the 2024-25 season as a little extra insurance for the system. He played eight NHL games in his previous stint with the Vegas Golden Knights, but otherwise has played in the minors. He was injured most of last season in Abbotsford but has made five starts in the AHL this season.
We’ll see how Demko’s situation plays out, but the story from the Canucks does hold water for now. The NHL season is hard enough on the body as it is. Time for rest and recovery is always at a premium. And with this season’s condensed scheduled due to the Olympics in February, finding time to recover is harder than ever, Lankinen admitted to Postmedia News after practice.
After Sunday’s game, the Canucks will have played 17 games in the opening 30 days of the season. That’s a brutal stretch and so it’s understandable why Demko may have felt he needed a little more time to recover, especially with another big stretch of games, filled with Stanley Cup contenders, on the way.
“It’s unheard of, even in my short career, that’s the most (games) we probably had within a month,” Lankinen noted. “At the same time, that’s our job. And the thing is, it’s the same for everybody this year.”
Lankinen listed off all the different things he does to recovery: “cold tubs, hot tubs, saunas, treatments, flush rides on the bike.”
“Just making sure you stretch and prepare for the game as well as you can, because the games are coming quick,” he said.
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