PENTICTON, B.C. — The first three days of training camp made it crystal clear that the Vancouver Canucks needed to add depth in goal.
While the club is very pleased with what they’re seeing at training camp this week in the Okanagan, and with some cause, the uncertainty that Vancouver is dealing with in net has lingered as something of a background concern throughout camp.
While the club’s high-flying, fast-paced transition-focused drills have provided a tantalizing snapshot of what this group could potentially accomplish attacking opponents off the rush this upcoming season, those drills have also served to expose Vancouver’s lack of goaltending quality with Thatcher Demko on the shelf indefinitely.
Jiří Patera has struggled, tryout netminder Dylan Ferguson was demoted on Saturday as Young Stars standout Ty Young was elevated to a group of NHL skaters, and Artūrs Šilovs and Nikita Tolopilo could be said to have mostly held up, as opposed to distinguishing themselves.
Watching Canucks camp sessions this week, it’s been easy to be impressed by this club’s potential to level up as a north-south attacking team, especially as flashes of skill from a variety of newcomers — a laser beam finish from Jake DeBrusk, a wonderfully high-end bit of passing skill from Jonathan Lekkerimäki, a slick move at full tilt from Kiefer Sherwood — leap off of the practice sheet with regularity. Simultaneously, however, as the steady drip of highlight-reel goals starts to overflow throughout each practice session, that nagging concern about the state of Vancouver’s goaltending depth has grown.
It’s important to note that the club remains optimistic about Demko’s progress. Still, given that the team’s Vezina nominee starter is still without a timeline to return to action, the need for further reenforcement in goal was apparent. And on Saturday, Vancouver was finally able to come to terms with Kevin Lankinen on a one-year, $875,000 contract.
For Lankinen, signing with the Canucks now was a matter of timing and getting back to work. The veteran puck stopper is still in his hometown of Helsinki, Finland where he’s been skating with a group of local professionals that has been significantly whittled down over the past week as his countrymen report to NHL camps. He plans to begin his journey to Vancouver, where he’ll join the Canucks and prepare to participate in preseason action on Sunday.
Lankinen’s camp and the Canucks have stayed in touch since the club first made the veteran puck stopper an offer in mid-August. Lankinen’s camp had been exploring other options with the Canucks offer in their back pocket, and on Saturday, at last, the time was right to strike a deal.
Welcoming Kevin Lankinen to the #Canucks! 👋 pic.twitter.com/uyEbusst7b
— Vancouver Canucks (@Canucks) September 21, 2024
From the Canucks perspective, adding Lankinen gives the club another experienced NHL option in net, which was sorely needed.
Lankinen, 29, has appeared in over 100 NHL games and has stopped pucks at a reliable, league-average rate on over 3300 shots faced. For comparison’s sake, the four goaltenders that skated with their two NHL-level groups in Penticton on Saturday have appeared in 27 NHL games combined and have stopped pucks at a below-league-average rate on just over 750 shots faced.
Of course there’s the question of what this all means and how it fits together once Demko returns to action. From what The Athletic understands, there have been no promises made to Lankinen about his role or playing time.
While Šilovs is waiver exempt and could easily be re-assigned to the American League without consequence, the club believes that the young Latvian netminder is ready to contribute at the NHL level full-time. In fact, The Athletic understands that Vancouver’s management team is currently weighing the merits of rostering three goaltenders this upcoming season once Demko is back.
Things can change quickly, but at the moment, that seems to be the team’s preferred path forward with Demko, Lankinen and Šilovs.
We’ll see how this shakes out moving forward, but in the meantime, Lankinen brings a fair bit of stability to Vancouver’s goaltending room. This was an addition that the club absolutely needed to make.
Hronek’s leadership and making sense of Canucks’ defence battles
As the Canucks got organized for a Day 3 drill that started with a defensive zone faceoff, Filip Hronek, who’s usually quiet and reserved, raised the volume of his voice to get the attention of Elias Pettersson, the defenceman.
“Petey! Petey!” he said to Pettersson, who was skating in the wrong direction, with his back toward Hronek, to set up for the drill. Hronek ushered his young defence partner over. Once Pettersson arrived, Hronek gave him some pointers — presumably on how they should approach the defensive zone draw — just before the puck dropped.
Hronek has initiated several conversations like this where he’s played the teacher role in camp so far. He’s been assertive and vocal, often giving Pettersson tips and instructions between drills. He’s taking charge and has backed it up with excellent play as well.
Hronek’s physicality and competitiveness have stood out in battle drills. He’s made elite-level plays that have drawn oohs and aahs from the crowd — he scored on a bullet one-timer in a drill on Day 3 and made a gorgeous cross-seam pass to set Nils Höglander up for a goal on Day 2.
“He’s been excellent … there’s just no drop-off,” Tocchet said of Hronek. “Some guys are sucking wind, I look at him and he’s just like ‘What’s the next drill?’ He worked really hard in the summer and he’s talking a lot out there.
“I actually texted him after the first day ‘Hey man, you’re playing really (well).’ You can just tell he’s a different guy in the sense that he wants to be more vocal so I’m really proud of him.”
We wonder if part of the logic behind separating Hronek from Quinn Hughes in training camp — who is not just playing on a separate pair from Hughes but in an entirely different group — has less to do with auditioning different looks for the top pair and more to do with the value that can be gained in other ways. For a promising prospect like Pettersson, this is a wonderful opportunity to play with and learn from a high-end top-four NHL defenceman. It’s an opportunity he wouldn’t have if Hughes and Hronek opened camp together.
Hronek, meanwhile, is gaining experience taking charge. He looks significantly more comfortable and confident as a leader now that he’s gained a full year of experience with the organization and the security of a long-term contract extension.
It’s been interesting watching the dynamic between some of these new defence pairs, but we’re not convinced that it’ll have any major ramifications for opening night. For example, Noah Juulsen has started camp next to Hughes, but the odds that he leaps past Vincent Desharnais on the depth chart and starts as one of the club’s top-six defencemen for Game 1 of the regular season are very slim. It’d be shocking to see the club commit $2 million to Desharnais and immediately sit him in the press box.
The left side of Vancouver’s defence doesn’t have much competition either. Hughes and Carson Soucy are locks and Derek Forbort doesn’t have any legitimate competition for a third-pair role. The Canucks’ top-six defender slots look relatively locked, but there are still real stakes on the line.
Kirill Kudryavtsev, who shined at the Young Stars tournament and impressed Tocchet during the first two days of camp, was elevated to play alongside Myers for Day 3. Kudryavtsev isn’t going to leapfrog Forbort and make the NHL team out of camp, but if he continues making a strong impression in camp and preseason, he’ll make a case to be a call-up consideration from Abbotsford whenever Vancouver runs into back-end injuries.
Kudryavtsev and Pettersson are jockeying with the likes of Christian Wolanin and Akito Hirose to rejig the organization’s left defence pecking order. That has meaningful implications because Soucy and Forbort struggled to stay healthy last season (both played less than 41 games). With Nikita Zadorov gone, all it could take is one left-side defence injury before management potentially turns to Abbotsford for reinforcements. And if that situation arises, management and coaches won’t forget the impression that players like Kudryavtsev and Pettersson are making right now at camp and during the preseason.
Sometimes when a player has been around for a while, knocking on the door and working to carve out a spot in the NHL lineup, they can become part of the furniture and get lost in the shuffle in popular discussions around a hockey club.
With so much of the focus on Vancouver’s newcomers on the wing — DeBrusk, Sherwood, Daniel Sprong, Danton Heinen — and on newer faces at camp like PTO forward Sammy Blais, it’s easy to overlook the real possibility that a player like Linus Karlsson might also force his way into the mix for a spot at the back end of Vancouver’s 23-man roster this preseason.
On Saturday morning, for example, Karlsson had a world-class rep during a Group A five-on-two attacking drill, scoring two consecutive goals, both on lovely sequences that showcased both his skill level and the subtle heaviness in his game.
We’d be wrong to overlook Karlsson’s opportunity here. This is, after all, a player that Tocchet clearly trusts. A player that Tocchet inserted into his lineup to try and give his team a boost during the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Make no mistake, getting into those playoff games matters a lot. It speaks volumes about Tocchet’s trust level in Karlsson, and Karlsson knows it.
“Those two games in the playoffs gave me extra confidence, and some extra energy and motivation to work out even harder this summer,” Karlsson said on Saturday. “To think, I could have a spot in the NHL.
“That’s why I wanted to sign for another year here, I wanted to give it a chance and I feel like I’m close.”
Karlsson eschewed other offers from European teams this summer. His exit meetings with Canucks coaches and brass last season were positive. He worked hard to increase his core strength and speed this summer, and apparently, that paid off in his skating tests.
Clearly he’s got the attention of and some trust from Vancouver’s head coach, and he’s been a subtle standout at training camp in Penticton.
The battle on the wings for minutes and spots on the 23-man roster is going to be fierce as exhibition play kicks off next week. Karlsson, however, remains a name to keep very much in mind in that battle.
Notes on the cap and the contract limit
In the wake of the Lankinen signing the Canucks have 48 contracts against the 50-contract limit, with Sawyer Mynio eligible to slide once he’s returned to his junior team.
We wanted to check in on whether that might impact a professional tryout player like Blais’ opportunity to earn a job with the NHL club — which would require the Canucks to sign him to an NHL-level contract — and was told by team sources the Lankinen signing will have no bearing whatsoever on Blais’ odds of making this team.
The club is comfortable entering the season with 48 contracts on the books. They’re committed to giving any player who makes the team on merit the opportunity to break camp with the NHL club.
I also checked in on whether or not the club will still be able to avoid utilizing Long-Term Injured Reserve (LTIR) given the Lankinen addition, given that Demko ($5 million) and Dakota Joshua ($3.25 million) are out indefinitely and that Cole McWard is week to week, in addition, of course, to the club needing to manage around Tucker Poolman’s $2.5 million cap hit.
Obviously the club’s path to entering the season without utilizing LTIR is getting tighter, and could get even tighter if other injuries flare up in the preseason, but the team still believes that there’s a way for them to enter the season out of LTIR as it currently stands.
(Photo of Kevin Lankinen while playing on the Predators in April 2024: Jamie Sabau / USA Today)
