Canucks’ pursuit of Kevin Lankinen ‘has not stopped’

Training camp is one week away, and the Vancouver Canucks still have yet to resolve their issues in goal. As it stands, Canucks star goaltender and last year’s Vezina runner-up Thatcher Demko’s status for the regular season remains in question. It’s not just Demko but also last season’s standout playoff performer, Arturs Silovs, is battling knee inflammation, which held him out of the Team Latvia men’s hockey Olympic team qualifying tournament.

This leaves recently signed Jiri Patera and Nikita Tolopilo as the projected one-two punch heading into the season.

With the starters crease for opening night of the season in question, it has long been speculated that the Canucks management group has shown interest in unrestricted free agent goaltender Kevin Lanknien. While he still remains unsigned, Chek TV’s Rick Dhaliwal confirms that the club is still interested in the goaltender:

“The Canucks pursuit of Lankinen has not stopped. They’ve held talks with his agent this week, there just hasn’t been progress,” said Dhaliwal. “So the Canucks made Lankinen an offer – it’s believed to be under one million dollars – the Canucks could sign Lankinen in 10 seconds, all they got to do is put Tucker Poolman on LTIR to get the deal done, they don’t want to do it. They want to do the Poolman LTIR thing at the trade deadline so they have space there.”

Vancouver has $190,833 of remaining cap space heading into the 2024/25 season. If the Canucks placed Poolman on LTIR, this would relieve $2.5 million off their books, clearing much-needed cap space to sign an insurance goaltender.

“There is no doubt in my mind Lankinen is their number one choice,” Dhaliwal continued. “So all UFA players have got to make a choice here in the next seven days, training camps are starting. I think the Canucks are trying to wait Lankinen out [to] see if he takes their offer closer to camp.”

Dhaliwal goes on to comment that if a deal isn’t worked out with Lankinen, the team could bring in another free agent goaltender on a professional tryout contract (PTO) for training camp. The top remaining unsigned goaltenders are BC native Martin Jones and Antti Raanta, who’s previously been on the Canucks radar for a PTO contract.