During the Vancouver Canucks end-of-season media availability on Friday, Thatcher Demko addressed the injury he suffered in January that shut him down for the majority of the season and the underlying cause of his recurring injuries over the last two years.<\/p>\n
Demko, 30, stated he underwent \u201cmajor surgery\u201d that was a \u201clast resort\u201d after consulting President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford and Canucks medical staff this winter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had glimpses coming into this season that there might be some underlying problems that [were]\u00a0 causing some of the issues that I was having\u2026at a certain point, we just realized that I wasn\u2019t really able to \u2026 stay healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demko started the season as the team\u2019s starting goaltender, with Kevin Lankinen serving as backup, who was expected to assist with Demko\u2019s load management. Demko was coming off a rare injury suffered to the popliteus muscle in the knee<\/a>, an affliction that saw him limited to just 23 games throughout the 2024-25 season.\u00a0While hopes were high that this season would be his successful return to the Canucks crease, Demko faced another injury in January of this year and was later placed<\/a> on injured reserve. It was announced on January 27<\/a> that Demko would be shut down for the season to undergo hip surgery, unrelated to his previous knee injury, and expected to make a full recovery in time for Canucks training camp this September.<\/p>\n Demko did not detail the specifics of his most recent surgery, although he revealed that he had been \u201cplaying with zero degrees of internal rotation in the hip\u201d over the last two years, a timeline that coincides with his knee injury early in the 2024 playoff series against the Nashville Predators.<\/p>\n