This past week, we’ve been working away on an informal series in which we compare the Vancouver Canucks’ most important roster sections to those of their Pacific Division rivals.
So far, we’ve found that the Canucks’ top-four defence is arguably the class of the division.
We’ve also found that their top-nine forward corps is…not.
Now, for the sake of completion, it’s time to cover the crease. But it feels like a strange endeavour in the present moment, because it’s quite difficult to know exactly what the Canucks have in their crease right now.
Were everyone to be at maximum health, there’d be little doubt about who had the best goaltending in the Pacific. Thatcher Demko is one of three current Pacific goalies to ever be nominated for the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best goaltender. One of the others, Philipp Grubauer, has seen his career and performance crumble since then. The other, Darcy Kuemper, was just nominated last year, but is notorious for his inconsistent performances.
Then you add in Kevin Lankinen, a pseudo-starter in his own right who stands head and shoulders above the average backup goaltender on most nights.
But Demko might never be at maximum health again, and there’s still an ongoing question as to how much his recent injury struggles will impact his quality and frequency of play in the long run.
So, instead of doing it like we did our last couple of articles, we’re avoiding a direct head-to-head comparison. Instead, we’ll cover some of the other lingering question marks in the other creases around the Pacific – where those question marks exist – and then offer some additional thoughts and commentary at the end.
Anaheim Ducks
Tandem: Lukas Dostal and Petr Mrazek
The John Gibson era is finally over in Anaheim.
With their oft-injured veteran starter traded to Detroit, the Ducks’ crease has been firmly handed over to the 25-year-old Dostal, who promptly signed a five-year, $6.5 million extension to mark the occasion.
The 2024-25 season was the second in a row that Dostal played the most games in Anaheim, and he’s maintained a save percentage above .900 in both of those campaigns despite the porousness of the team in front of him. Simply put, he’s one of the best young starters in the league.
To ensure he’s well-supported, the Ducks have two veteran backups on hand in Petr Mrazek and Ville Husso.
The question mark for the Ducks is how much Dostal will continue to grow into his role as starter. He’s not quite at that game-stealing, Vezina-talk level yet, but he’s also got a number of years to get there.
For now, we can call Anaheim one of the most stable goaltending situations in the division, but one whose ultimate potential is still yet unknown.
Calgary Flames
Tandem: Dustin Wolf and Devin Cooley
Dustin Wolf just had a rookie season that would have won him the Calder Trophy most years. Few goalies have come into the league in recent memory and made as strong an impression as did the 24-year-old Wolf, who posted a .910 save percentage and a 2.64 GAA in 53 games for a not-so-great Flames.
The only things the Flames have to worry about is the potential for a sophomore slump for Wolf, and whether they’ve supported him well enough with veteran tweener Cooley as his backup.
But if we said Anaheim has a bright and stable future in net, they’re still a step behind Calgary in that regard. Few teams in the entire league feel better about their long-term goaltending situation than do the Flames.
Edmonton Oilers
Tandem: Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard
Do the Oilers have question marks in the crease? Is the Pope from Chicago?
All indications are that Edmonton is going to run back the duo of Skinner and Pickard that they’ve made it to two consecutive Finals largely in spite of.
We can kind of flip this one around in a fun way, because A LOT would have to go wrong in Vancouver for the Canucks to end up with worse goaltending than the Oilers in 2025-26.
There’s not much more to be said here, aside from perhaps a little schadenfreude. Skinner and Pickard very much are what they are at this point, and what they are is a big question mark on an otherwise contending team that isn’t going to go away anytime soon.
Los Angeles Kings
Tandem: Darcy Kuemper and Anton Forsberg
This is probably the toughest crease to call in the entire division.
Kuemper was a Vezina nominee last year. But he’s only ever rarely been a goaltender of that quality, especially over an entire season’s length. In fact, just the year prior, Kuemper was so bad for the Washington Capitals that they sent him to LA as an effective cap dump!
If Kuemper keeps his hot streak going, the Kings will be in good hands. But it’s the uncertainty of it all that leaves them with some major question marks, especially with a fairly ordinary veteran backup in Anton Forsberg added to the mix.
The Kings could again have the best goaltending in the division, or they could also reasonably have the worst. That’s the kind of swing in potential performance that the Canucks can relate to of late.
San Jose Sharks
Tandem: Yaroslav Askarov and Alex Nedeljkovic
The Sharks aren’t worried about their crease at all. They made a big move last year to acquire the top goaltending prospect in the world, Askarov, and the long-term plan is to build him up as the team’s full-time starter.
To help with that, the Sharks brought in the workmanlike Nedeljkovic; pretty much the perfect goalie to platoon with someone like Askarov without stealing too many starts from him.
There will be inevitable growing pains, of course. For Askarov to step in next and play as well as Wolf did last season would be a pleasant surprise, but a surprise all the same – especially behind that San Jose defence.
Suffice it to say that the Sharks probably won’t have the best goaltending in the division, but they won’t really care about that yet, anyway.
Seattle Kraken
Tandem: Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer
The Kraken really lucked out in having Daccord break out unexpectedly into starter quality play. That’s allowed them to effectively work around the millstone that Grubauer’s contract – one of the first the franchise signed in free agency – has become.
Daccord is still a little new in the league to call him anything resembling a sure thing, but he’s got two very good years as the Seattle starter under his belt, including consecutive save percentages above .906.
There’s a serious cost inefficiency here in paying Grubauer a $5.9 million cap hit to be a shaky backup, especially since Daccord has now started his own $5 million extension. But the Kraken aren’t exactly hurting for cap space, so it’s not currently a major issue. As long as Daccord continues to play as well as he has, they’ll be reasonably satisfied, and they should have some of the best (starting) goaltending in the division.
Vegas Golden Knights
Tandem: Adin Hill and Akira Schmid
The only team without any major question marks is, again, Vegas.
They’ve already won a Cup with Hill, and though he’s starting a new contract with a $6.25 million cap hit, there’s not much to indicate he won’t be worth it. He did have a poor playoffs last year, with a save percentage of just .887 through two rounds, but it’s hard to worry much about that when Hill’s already won a Stanley Cup as recently as 2023.
Hill has a cheap, newish backup with one of the coolest names in hockey in Akira Schmid. That’s a small potential question mark, but it’s not like the Golden Knights won’t be able to find a different backup somewhere else if Schmid isn’t up to snuff.
As this series has shown, the only real question the Vegas Golden Knights are facing is how much Alex Pietrangelo’s early retirement will affect them. Technically, that’s a question mark that will impact goaltending, but it’s not a goaltending question mark.
If Vegas doesn’t have the best goaltending in the division, expect them to at least get goaltending that doesn’t get in the way of their success (see: Edmonton).
Notes and Thoughts
As of 2026-27, the Canucks will be paying the tandem of Demko and Lankinen a total of $13 million a year. But for 2025-26, Demko’s cap hit is still at $5 million, and so their total crease expenditure is $9.5 million.
That still puts them on the higher side of the Pacific pack, with Calgary, Edmonton, Los Angeles, San Jose, and Vegas all paying less, and just Anaheim and Seattle paying more.
In other words, if the Canucks don’t get a better quality of goaltending in 2025-26 than they did in 2024-25, they’ll have introduced a new cost inefficiency to their roster that will really stand out from their intradivisional foes.
Should Demko regain his form, we’re confident putting him head-to-head with any other starter in this division.
And in terms of backups, it’s hard to find any second fiddle in this group that can hold a candle to Lankinen, save perhaps Nedeljkovic at his very best.
The questions all centre around Demko and his health. If he’s not back to 100% or close to it, how much will that continue to impact his performance? If he needs to miss time, how well will Lankinen handle an increased load (one that clearly got to him at times last season)?
These are the question marks facing the Canucks’ crease in 2025-26. They’re not unique in having question marks, as this article has plainly shown, but theirs might just be the biggest in the Pacific – and that makes predicting the Canucks’ ultimate fate extremely difficult.
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