The Vancouver Canucks do not have a goaltending crisis on their hands, at least not by their usual standards. But they do have three goaltenders on hand at the NHL level heading into the 2026-27 season, and that’s going to, at the very least, force them into a decision of some sort sooner rather than later.

The Canucks have options when it comes to their crease, but they’re going to have to go with one of those options eventually.

Thatcher Demko returns from a couple of injury-plagued campaigns and an offseason surgery that seems to have him more confident about his health than ever. He’s also about to begin a three-year, $8.5 million AAV extension. At that price, until he can show an ability to stay healthy, Demko’s trade value is well into the negatives, and he’s got a full no-movement clause attached to all three years anyway as of July 1. He’ll be staying in Vancouver for the time being, and the question is more one of how much he’ll manage to play in 2026-27.

Speaking of contracts, the Canucks also have Kevin Lankinen signed at a rate of $4.5 million for the next four seasons running. That contract also includes a full NMC of his own for the duration of the 2026-27 season, which means that Lankinen isn’t going anywhere, either, unless he chooses to.

Then there’s the 26-year-old Nikita Tolopilo. He showed some real signs of NHL life in 2025-26, but has run out of waiver exemption, and now must either play at the NHL level, or risk being passed through waivers.

The Canucks could attempt to roll with all three goaltenders into the 2026-27 season. They could, instead, attempt to trade Demko, but that seems incredibly unlikely. They could opt to trade Lankinen, but that requires his assent. They could try to flip Tolopilo for the same sort of middling return they got back for Arturs Silovs last offseason. Or they could attempt to put him through waivers come Training Camp, and just hope for the best.

None of those options are ideal, and we’re not sure which the Canucks are currently leaning toward. But about half of those options involve a goaltending trade of some sort, and so it’s probably time to explore the offseason goalie market to at least see what’s waiting for the Canucks there.

We can break the other 31 teams down into some broad categories on this topic. There are those teams who have at least two strong goaltending options signed into the 2026-27, and thus have no interest in any goaltending market. We would place Boston (Jeremy Swayman and Joonas Korpisalo), Calgary (Dustin Wolf and Devin Cooley), Colorado (Scott Wedgewood, MacKenzie Blackwood), Dallas (Jake Oettinger and Casey DeSmith), Los Angeles (Darcy Kuemper and Anton Forsberg), Minnesota (Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt), Montreal (Jakub Dobes and Jacob Fowler), Nashville (Juuse Saros and Justus Annunen), New Jersey (Jacob Markstrom and Jake Allen), San Jose (Yaroslav Askarov and Alex Nedeljkovic), Seattle (Joey Daccord and Philipp Grubauer), St. Louis (Joel Hofer and Jordan Binnington), Vegas (Carter Hart and Adin Hill), and Washington (Logan Thompson and Charlie Lindgren) in this enormous category, representing nearly half of the league’s teams.

There may be some movement within this group over the course of the offseason. We’ve heard that the Blues might be shopping Binnington around, for example, the Wild might be dangling one of their goalies for a centre, and we’d bet the Golden Knights are eager to dump Hill. But suffice it to say that none of these teams are going to be calling for anything the Canucks might have to offer, goalie-wise.

There’s a second, similar category of teams that have at least two goaltending options in place and signed for 2026-27, but who could theoretically use an upgrade at either the starting or backup position, but for whom it is not a pressing need. We’d place Anaheim (Lukas Dostal and Ville Husso), Buffalo (Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Alex Lyon, and Colten Ellis), Columbus (Jet Greaves and Elvis Merzlikins), Tampa Bay (Andrei Vasilevskiy and Jonas Johansson), and Toronto (Anthony Stolarz, Joseph Woll, and Dennis Hildeby) in this category.

Most of those teams are simply looking for a more solid backup. Under the right circumstances, we could see one of those teams being interested in a Lankinen or maybe even a Tolopilo option, but they’ll all almost certainly explore the goalie UFA market first, which includes names like Sergei Bobrovsky, Petr Mrazek, Freddie Andersen, Stuart Skinner, Cam Talbot, and David Rittich, among others, before they go looking to make trades.

The real goalie trade market opens up next, with those teams who really, truly have needs at the goaltending position. In this category, we’ll find Carolina, who have the aforementioned Andersen expiring and two relatively inexperienced goalies remaining in Brandon Bussi and Pyotr Kochetkov. Deep inside their Cup window, they’ll presumably want more. The Chicago Blackhawks absolutely need a better backup behind Spencer Knight than Arvid Soderblom. Both New York teams, the Islanders and Rangers, will need new backups behind Ilya Sorokin and Igor Shesterkin (though the Rangers have the young Dylan Garand on the way up, and the Islanders still have Semyon Varlamov on LTIR). Ottawa will need a new backup behind Linus Ullmark, as will Utah behind Karel Vejmelka and Winnipeg behind Connor Hellebuyck. The Pittsburgh Penguins still have Arturs Silovs, but need to supplement him with either a strong backup or a 1B type if none of their younger goaltenders prove ready by next season.

Those teams are all free to peruse the UFA list themselves, too. But the needs are stronger in this category, and that should mean that each of these teams at least explore the goalie trade market. That could feasibly include a call or two to the Vancouver Canucks.

Our final goalie trade market category is the category of desperate need. Those teams that absolutely, no-doubt-about-it, need to do something about the state of their goaltending in this offseason. It’s a short list, and it contains just the Edmonton Oilers (who have the overpriced Tristan Jarry in place, and two outgoing UFAs), the Florida Panthers (who have no one in place with Bobrovsky and Daniil Tarasov both expiring), and the Philadelphia Flyers (who have one year of the surprising Dan Vladar left, then little after that). Those three teams definitely represent the Canucks very best chance of finding a goaltending suitor this offseason, but as should be evidenced by the rest of this article, they’ll have other options to explore, too.

The only real conclusion that should be drawn from this is that the goaltending market is a limited one in the 2026 offseason, and thus probably not something that the Canucks are going to have too much luck with. It tells us that their hopes of dealing either Demko or Lankinen are slim – but, then, we probably knew that already, what with their diminished values and NMCs. It tells us that there probably will be another opportunity to trade Tolopilo for a small package, as was done with Silovs, but that will probably be the Canucks’ only trade option. Beyond that, it’s either risking Tolopilo to waivers or attempting to roll into 2026-27 with a three-headed goaltending monster.

It’s just not looking to be a particularly good summer for dealing goalies.

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