Thatcher Demko, and when the goalie mattered
The Vancouver stopper is back and ready to play until June as the playoffs begin.
When, where and how will Thatcher Demko will come back? What will he look like when he does? Never mind the “why.” It’s Vancouver, it’s hockey, and it’s the goaltender who will determine whether the playoff spring lasts until 9:30 p.m. sunsets or ends in parka weather.
Just as the Canucks had frolicked through the winter and seized the Pacific Division championship, Demko went down for 14 games with a knee injury. Nothing to worry about, no sir. Just the sanity of a city that has never seen the Canucks win a Stanley Cup.
Demko did return for the final two games of the regular season. He was very good in a 4-2 win over Calgary, in which he stopped 36 of 37 shots and stopped all five high-danger shots that he saw. He was less than that in the finale against Winnipeg, letting in three goals in 16 shots, as the Canucks lost, but several high-end players were sitting out Game 82. So Vancouver gears up for the first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against Nashville, a feisty, formidable team that has been riding a heater, and has its own goaltending celebrity in Juuse Saros. Who knows which team will get four wins first? First rounds never have guardrails. But the refreshing part about Demko’s cavalry act is that it makes goalies important again.
Obviously you can’t win a Stanley Cup without an elite performance in goal. The difference is that the skill level of the league has reduced the number of elite goaltenders. Fourth-line guys aren’t just there because they can uppercut. Most can shoot and skate these days. For the third consecutive year, NHL games averaged over six goals, and there were 150 comeback wins from deficits of two goals or more. The sophistication of the power play has been a particular headache. This season, there were four teams that scored more than 25 percent of the time on power plays (Tampa Bay, Edmonton, Carolina and the Rangers) and the league average was almost 21 percent. Only ten seasons ago, the leaders were at 23 percent and the league was at 17 percent.
More and more, coaches are asking goalies to hold the fort, not dispel the invaders. From 1997 through 2012, at least one goalie had double-figure shutouts in every year but four. Dominik Hasek had 13 in 1998, Martin Brodeur 12 in 2007. But no goalie has had 10 shutouts in a season since Marc-Andre Fleury in 2015. The leaders this season were Sergei Bobrovsky (Florida), Connor Ingram (Arizona), Tristan Jarry (Pittsburgh) and Charlie LIndgren (Washington), all with six.
Of the 28 NHL players who made $9.5 million or more this season, only three were goaltenders. One was Montreal’s Carey Price, who retired before opening night. The other two are Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky and Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy, who has won two Stanley Cups.
Vasilevskiy is the last goalie to win the Conn Smythe Trophy, given to the outstanding player in the postseason. That happened in 2021. The previous one was the Kings’ Jonathan Quick in 2012. Tim Thomas of Boston got it in 2011, and then you go to 2003, when Anaheim’s Jean-Sebastien Giguere was the morose Smythe recipient after a Finals loss to New Jersey.
Before that, goalies snatched the Smythe 10 times. Price was the last Hart Trophy winner, given to the league’s MVP, in 2015, although Hasek was a back-to-back Hart winner in 1997-98 for Buffalo.
Demko defies those trends, but he’s symbolic of the league’s geographical reach. He grew up in San Diego but the family moved to Los Angeles so he could play for the Junior Kings. As the story goes, Demko’s Mite-level team had a rule that rotated players from position to position, meaning Demko couldn’t play goal in every practice. But when another kid was too scared to get in net, Demko volunteered. He’d already thought the pads were pretty cool. Obsession followed.
Demko played for a U.S. select team in a Czech tournament when he was 10. He played for Omaha in the U.S. Hockey League when he was 16. He was determined to graduate from Boston College in three and a half years, so he found himself writing papers online while he was “vacationing” in Hawaii. More critically, he needed labrum surgery on both hips, which isn’t usually done in one operation. He literally had to re-learn the fundamentals of walking. But he was in goal when Boston College went to two Frozen Fours, and at one point he had a 200-minute scoreless streak.
This season Demko was 35-14-2 with career bests in save percentage (.918) and goals-against (2.45). He came into the season with three shutouts in his career and added five. With Demko healthy and functioning, Vancouver has more than enough to become the first Canadian Stanley Cup champ since Montreal in 1993. Certainly Edmonton, Winnipeg and Toronto can say the same thing, and Winnipeg has the probable Vezina Trophy winner in Connor Hellebuyck and the best defense pair in Josh Morrissey and Dylan DeMelo. But the Canucks counter with Quinn Hughes, a 92-point defenseman, playing alongside Filip Hronek, and they also have Tyler Myers, the 6-foot-8 “chaos giraffe.” Up front J.T. Miller and Elias Petterson dominate the middle, and Brock Boeser led the Canucks with 40 goals.
Because Jim Rutherford dealt Bo Horvat to the Islanders last season, he had the flexibility to sign Miller and Petterson long term and still trade for Calgary’s Elias Lindholm, another world-class center who has mysteriously struggled in Vancouver. The Canucks are hoping they’re also strong enough in the low-glory areas, the corners where the loose pucks are captured in the exhaust of the third period. That’s the mandate from coach Rick Tocchet, who left the TNT studio late last season to try to see if the Canucks had a pulse. They are 70-35-13 since he arrived.
Vancouver had a Game 7 and the Stanley Cup in its building 13 years ago. The subsequent, nolo contendere 4-0 loss to Boston sparked angry riots in the city and left deep scars on the fanbase. It also meant the Sedin twins would never win the Cup. A welcome sign, at least for some, is the return of the Green Men, two fellows wearing indecently tight body suits who hang out at the visitors’ penalty box and taunt offending players through the glass. It’s the longest two-minute span you can endure in the NHL, sort of like the 14 games Canucks fans had to spend without Demko. With him, they see an elongated, deafening spring.
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Looking back and ahead:
Hart Trophy (MVP): Auston Matthews, Toronto.
Norris Trophy (defenseman): Roman Josi, Nashville.
Calder Trophy (rookie): Connor Bedard, Chicago.
Adams Trophy (coach): Rick Tocchet, Vancouver.
Executive: Kevin Cheveldayoff, Winnipeg.
Vezina (goalie): Connor Hellebuyck, Winnipeg.
Selke (defensive forward): Sebastian Aho, Carolina.
Conn Smythe (playoff MVP): Quinn Hughes, Vancouver.
Special recognition: Colton Parayko of St. Louis led the league with 218 blocked shots. Gustav Forsling of Florida was plus-56, ten ahead of everyone else. Sidney Crosby, at 36, played all 82 games and had 42 goals and nearly dragged the Penguins into the playoffs. A pair of 34-year-olds, John Carlson of Washington and Drew Doughty of Los Angeles, were 1-2 in time on ice.
Three teenagers had 20 or more goals: Connor Bedard of Chicago (22), Logan Cooley of Arizona (20) and Juraj Slafkowsky of Montreal (20). Fifty-one of Auston Matthews’ 69 goals were at even-strength. Florida’s Sam Reinhart had a 57-goal season and scored on almost a quarter of his shots (24.5).
Playoffs:
Vegas over Dallas, 4-2.
Winnipeg over Colorado, 4-2
Vancouver over Nashville, 4-2
Edmonton over Los Angeles, 4-3
Tampa Bay over Florida, 4-2
Boston over Toronto, 4-2
N.Y. Rangers over Washington, 4-0.
N.Y. Islanders over Carolina, 4-2.
Vegas over Winnipeg, 4-2
Vancouver over Edmonton, 4-3
Boston over Tampa Bay, 4-1
N.Y. Rangers over N.Y. Islanders, 4-2
Conference Finals
Vancouver over Vegas, 4-1.
N.Y. Rangers over Boston, 4-1.
Stanley Cup Final
Vancouver over N.Y. Rangers, 4-2.