On Wednesday’s episode of Canucks Conversation, David Quadrelli was joined by Kevin Woodley of InGoal Magazine to discuss Thatcher Demko’s outlook for the 2024–25 season and some of the most intriguing forward battles expected at Canucks training camp.

Woodley explained why, based on Demko’s history, this coming year has the potential to be one of his best- if not his most durable.

“If you look at his history, this sets up to be a really good year for him in terms of staying healthy or playing a larger number of games; getting through more of the season,” Woodley said. “You look at his first year as a starter — 64 games. Gets injured late in the season, plays through it for a while until they’re clearly no longer in the playoffs, then they shut him down. 64 games is his career high. He needed surgery that offseason.”

According to Woodley, Demko’s injury timeline and offseason recovery patterns point to a clear trend: when the goaltender has a healthy, full summer to train, he’s typically reliable and effective. When he’s rehabbing instead of training, that’s when issues start.

“He comes off the knee surgery in the offseason, there’s nobody from staff on hand for his first skates, so he goes like a bat out of hell trying to get ready for the start of the season with nobody monitoring it or limiting reps. He comes back, and he already has a compensatory hitch to his movement by the time the season starts that nobody spots,” Woodley said. “He was narrowing his butterfly as he drops to protect the knee, which led to the groin injury. That season was cut short because he wasn’t healthy in the summer.”

Woodley outlined how that cycle repeated in recent years.

“He gets through a heavy workload, ends up hurt at the end, comes back the next year and gets hurt in part because he never fully recovered from that. So he gets hurt again, has a year where he’s off and on, then went into the next season healthy because he used the break with the groin injury to change his training, and has a great offseason like he is reportedly having this offseason,” he said.

The result? History suggests that when Demko gets a full offseason of focused training- like he’s getting now- he delivers.

“So if you step back and look at it,” Woodley continued, “when he has a healthy summer, he has a good season where he plays a lot of games. When he finishes the year not healthy and has to rehab in the summer not doing his regular work, that’s where he runs into trouble during the season. So in terms of that pattern, it all sets up to be a good season this year.”

The conversation then shifted to the competition shaping up in Vancouver’s bottom-six forward group, with players like Arshdeep Bains, Vitali Kravtsov, and Max Sasson all in the mix.

Quads brought up Bains, noting: “You’d like to see more offensive output from Bains, and that’s where some people would question why he was in the lineup. But he has a good bottom-line game. His defence is there; he’s not going to hurt you when he’s out there, but you do want more offensive ability from him.”

Woodley acknowledged those concerns but sees more potential in Bains.

“I think there’s more there for Bains. We’ve seen it in the AHL at times- I don’t know how high that ceiling is but he’s still developing,” Woodley said. “He’s a ‘put the boots on, find a way to get better’ guy and we’ve seen there’s more there already, so I think it’s a matter of comfort and trust.”

On the other side of that conversation is Kravtsov, who returned to the Canucks organization after a strong season in the KHL and has quickly become one of the more interesting wildcard names heading into camp.

“Kravtsov is the shiny toy with the big numbers in Russia,” Woodley said. “It’s pretty rare they translate straight across, but with that said, they don’t need to translate at the same rate for him to be effective here. Half that would be a bonus for this team- especially given the question marks surrounding who’s going to put the puck in the net.”

With Demko looking primed for a bounce-back season and a few bottom-six roles up for grabs, the Canucks’ preseason will have no shortage of storylines.

You can watch the full replay of the show below: