On Friday morning, the Vancouver Canucks made a roster move that raised a few eyebrows. Ahead of their practice at Rogers Arena, the Canucks recalled goaltender Jiri Patera from AHL Abbotsford under emergency conditions. Naturally, this raised questions about Thatcher Demko’s status, as the Canucks’ All-Star goaltender has battled injuries throughout his career and appeared in just 23 games last season as a result of multiple IR stints.

Demko was not on the ice at practice today, and head coach Adam Foote says that while Demko doesn’t have an injury, he is following the Canucks’ request of taking time off when he feels he needs it in order to prevent injuries later in the season.

“We asked him this summer, and we had a conversation with him to take care of himself, and know in a condensed schedule when he feels he needs a little bit of time off, and that’s what he’s doing. I don’t want to say words that people don’t like, like maintenance [or that] sort of thing, but l’ll give you an example. If you play a long time — not Thatcher — but say you have a back surgery early in your career. As you get a chance to play a long time, you know in your last seven years, five years, the latter half of your career, there’s times where you can feel something else come, [because of] compensation, right? So, you might have to have a maintenance day or some time to work on something, so that’s it, that’s all.

“He’s such a great leader that he doesn’t want to ever miss a day. Even his teammates in the summer in the leadership meetings were like, one thing we always talked about was ‘Demmer, you got to know when to go and take care of you in a certain situation.’ He’s doing what we asked him to do, and I like that.”

Foote added that Demko “may be” an option for the Canucks this weekend in their back-to-back games against the Columbus Blue Jackets and Colorado Avalanche. Be sure to check back later today for Jeff Paterson’s Scenes from Canucks Practice report!