MONTREAL — The only good thing about the Vancouver Canucks’ annual avalanche of injuries is that, this season at least, they help protect what looks like an elite draft position.
Just as play-driving winger Conor Garland returns Monday night after missing five games with a head injury, relentless buzzsaw Kiefer Sherwood, who leads the Canucks with 17 goals, is expected to miss his first game of the season.
Minor-league callup Nikita Tolopilo gets his fourth start in net against the Montreal Canadiens because star goalie Thatcher Demko is back on the injured list and back in Vancouver being re-assessed after sustaining his sixth injury in less than two years Saturday in Toronto.
Coach Adam Foote revealed after Monday’s morning skate at the Bell Centre that Demko has been dealing with a couple of ongoing medical issues. Although his latest absence may be brief, it’s also possible that the 2024 Vezina Trophy runner-up could be out long term, or even shut down for the season.
“It might be possible,” Foote said of that scenario. “Honestly, we’ll know more when he sees the doctors the next couple days. He’s got a couple things going on. He’s been dealing with it all year, a couple of things.
-
-
32 Thoughts: The Podcast
Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.
“He went back to get evaluated by the doctors and, you know, see what’s next. We’ll find out probably the next couple days.”
Foote said new second-line centre Marco Rossi, injured in the same game as Garland against the Philadelphia Flyers on Dec. 30, will likely miss another two or three weeks.
To understand what this season has been like injury-wise for the Canucks, consider the centre position, which was already the team’s weakest when the campaign began.
Teddy Blueger, the third of only three proven NHL centres in Vancouver when the season started, missed the first four games. When he returned, the Canucks had their three centres together for only two games before Blueger and second-line centre Filip Chytil were injured the same afternoon in Washington on Oct. 19.
Neither has played since, although both skated here in non-contact jerseys.
When Rossi was acquired from the Minnesota Wild on Dec. 12, first-line centre Elias Pettersson was in the middle of an eight-game absence. After Pettersson returned, Rossi was hurt three games later.
So it has gone.
“It’s tough when you lose guys down the middle,” Garland said after the skate. “I know it sounds corny, but, I mean, we’re in the NHL, playing in a great city, a big market. Like, you really shouldn’t be too down. Everybody hates losing, and that’s kind of our main motivator. So, if you’re in the lineup, you’ve got to be up and you’ve got to be ready to play. One player doesn’t determine a win or a loss. But if you take care of your job and you play well and you play consistently, then you give your team a better chance to win. That’s how you’ve got to look at it.”
Largely indestructible his first four seasons in Vancouver, Garland is coming back from his third injury of the year. The latest came when he hit the back of his head on the ice after he was slew-footed and clotheslined away from the puck by forechecking Philadelphia Flyer Noah Cates.
No penalty was called.
“Like, if you get hit, you get hit,” Garland said. “But I didn’t love that one. We’ll play them again next year. (The referee) said he didn’t see it, which is fine. You know, (the referee) was Gordie (Dwyer), and I really like him. I think all the refs do a great job. If he didn’t see it, he can’t call it. You know, they miss things sometimes. They’re human.”
Obviously, so is Demko.
“You get hurt, it sucks,” Garland said. “It sucks watching and it’s a grind to get back (healthy) so, you know, I feel for him. Demmer is as diligent as they come. I think mostly what we miss is kind of that presence he has in the room. He holds guys accountable almost just by his presence. You don’t ever want to play bad for that guy. He doesn’t say much, but he has quite a presence, so we’ll miss him.”
Foote is starting Tolopilo, who went 2-1 during Demko’s one-month absence earlier this season, because backup Kevin Lankinen played the final 40 minutes of Saturday’s 5-0 loss in Toronto and the Canucks face the Ottawa Senators on Tuesday in the second night of back-to-back games.
Sherwood, second in the NHL in hits this season after shattering the single-season record last year, finished the Toronto game and was part of the morning skate in Montreal. But Foote was not optimistic about the winger’s short-term availability.
“He’s trying to go through something,” Foote said, “and my gut says it’s probably going to be a week to three weeks, probably. So it doesn’t look promising.”
Foote is making a couple of voluntary changes on defence.
Struggling 21-year-old Elias Pettersson (Junior) has been sent to the American Hockey League for development work, while minor-league callup Victor Mancini, a promising 23-year-old prospect, will play an NHL game for the first time since suffering an upper-body injury against the Edmonton Oilers on Oct. 26.
The Canucks will also give top prospect Zeev Buium and one-game “reset,” making the talented 20-year-old defenceman a healthy scratch for the first time since his acquisition with Rossi and winger Liam Ohgren in the Quinn Hughes trade a month ago.
“Just a reset for Zeev,” Foote said. “And with Petey, even from the beginning of the year, we thought we’d want to give him some more reps in the ‘A’ and we just got caught up in a situation with injuries.
“It’s really hard, seeing young D in the past in the NHL, you get put in too early sometimes or don’t get a reset or (have) accountability. But it’s part of teaching too, right? And development is part of it. Junior’s going to be just fine … and so is Zeev. It is being young and just trying to manage it.”
Last in the league, the Canucks have lost five straight games.
How they skated
Forwards
DeBrusk-Pettersson-Karlsson
Garland-Kampf-Boeser
Ohgren-Sasson-O’Connor
Kane-Raty-Hoglander
Defencemen
Willander-Hronek
Joseph-Myers
M. Pettersson-Mancini
Goalie
Tolopilo (Lankinen)
