On December 8th, Thatcher Demko will turn 30 years old.
Remarkably, he has made exactly four National Hockey League playoff starts in parts of eight seasons with the Vancouver Canucks. Now, there are a number of factors that play into that.
First and foremost, the team in front of him simply hasn’t been good enough often enough. Beyond that, there is the question of Demko’s health and a body that has betrayed him too frequently at a position that demands so much. While four postseason starts and five appearances are both staggeringly low numbers for a goalie of Demko’s calibre, the flip side of that is that the San Diego native’s track record in his limited Stanley Cup playoff action is off the charts. 
Demko is 3-1 with a 0.97 GAA, a .974 save percentage and a shutout. Yes, he has given up exactly four goals in four playoff starts. And that’s why it’s so crucial that the Canucks do everything in their power to build this team back to the point it becomes a regular playoff qualifier. Demko has shown through many regular season stretches and in his two brief tastes of the playoffs that he can absolutely be a difference maker. And so by committing to him for three more seasons with his $25.5M extension announced Tuesday morning, the Canucks need to get to a point where Demko can prove he can be the team’s biggest weapon.
For context and by comparison, since Demko broke into the NHL in the 2017-18 season, Andrei Vasilvskiy has appeared in 108 playoff games for Tampa Bay while Sergei Bobrovsky has 99 postseason games on his resume in the same time. Of course, both of them have a pair of Stanley Cups to show for their efforts. 
Three of Demko’s playoff starts came in the Edmonton bubble in the summer of 2020. Besides that, he got the start in Game 1 against Nashville a year ago, picked up the win and wasn’t seen again in a Canucks uniform until December.
In Demko and Kevin Lankinen, the Canucks believe they have one of the best goaltending tandems in the NHL. It’s on Adam Foote and his coaching staff to make sure to use that to the team’s greatest advantage. That means despite any temptations, the Canucks simply can not overuse Demko in the regular season. 
While regaining his Vezina finalist form from a year ago may represent the team’s best hopes of a bounce back season, Demko’s injury lengthy history must now be taken into account in every decision the team makes about its netminding.
It would be understandable if Foote – like Rick Tocchet and Bruce Boudreau before him – felt the urge to ride Demko for long stretches. But ultimately that’s what got Demko and the Canucks into trouble in recent years. And the club is now at a point where less might actually be more when it comes to Demko. By using Lankinen properly in a tandem during the regular season, the Canucks stand the best shot of having a healthy Demko ready to shine when it matters most. 
Over the past three campaigns, Demko has made 106 regular season starts and one more in the playoffs. That’s an average of 35 starts per season. The Canucks don’t need to make it a pure 50/50 split next season and they certainly don’t have to make any decisions today, but organizationally they have to figure out a number they simply won’t exceed when it comes to the number of times Thatcher Demko tends the net.
And Demko, himself, has to not only see the bigger picture through all of this, but agree to it. 
With the security of a new agreement in his back pocket, he no longer needs to approach next season as any sort of proving ground. He’s shown what he can do when he’s healthy and at the top of his game and it’s clear he can be one of the best goaltenders in the NHL.
And that’s such a tantilizing prospect to think about in terms of what he could do if he could ever get on any sort of playoff run. But first things first, the Canucks have to build a playoff calibre team in front of him. And then they have to do the right things to keep Demko healthy so that when opportunity knocks, he’s ready to answer.
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