The Vancouver Canucks have been without their star goaltender Thatcher Demko as he’s still recovering from his Popliteus injury he suffered in last season’s opening playoff game on April 21. Now, on November 4, TSN’s Darren Dreger joined Sekeres & Price on Monday morning with an update on last season’s Vezina runner-up:

“He’s been going through his goalie workouts, and he has been skating and he has been taking shots, but he hasn’t practiced with the full group,” Dreger explained. “The hope is that Thatcher will return to the full team practice this week. Then, after that, you start looking at a countdown. Now, are we talking several days? Are we still talking in the week to week category? One thing we know here is that it’s been pretty evident that the Vancouver Canucks are not going to push Thatcher Demko. They don’t really feel like they need to. He’s been working his ‘you know what’ off in the background to make sure that the problem that he has isn’t going to develop into a bigger problem down the road.

“Because of the patience the club has shown and the fact they haven’t had to force him back into the mix, he’s taking advantage of this time away. I would say for Demko, in terms of game action, is inside three weeks. But that timeline is probably going to either be shortened – I don’t think it will be lengthened – depending on how he feels after a couple of practices.”

The American netminder was injured late in Game 1, making an athletic save against the Nashville Predators. There was hope he would be able to return had the Canucks advanced to the Western Conference final, but they lost 3-2 in Game 7 against the Edmonton Oilers.

As Dreger mentioned, the Canucks earned themselves some valuable time with their recent signing Kevin Lankinen, who’s held them in multiple games this season. He has a 5-0-2 record, a 2.25 goals against average and a .919 save percentage and once Demko returns, the duo will form a competitive one-two punch in the Canucks crease for the remainder of the season.