Canucks training camp: Thatcher Demko speaks, reading too much into lines and more
PENTICTON, B.C. — It was an eventful, fascinating start to the Vancouver Canucks season.
On Thursday at the South Okanagan Events Centre, we learned more about Thatcher Demko 's unprecedented injury, heard from an upbeat Elias Pettersson and watched two lengthy, high-paced Canucks practices focused on regroups and rush attacking.
"There were a lot of pace drills, a lot of regroups and stuff like that," Rick Tocchet summarized of the first day, "I think a lot of guys were smiling."
The offensive emphasis looked fun, at least for the attackers. Tocchet has spoken at length of wanting to focus on working to develop a more aggressive attacking mindset for the Canucks this season, and the basic rhythms of Thursday's practice matched that intent. This is a team that clearly wants to generate more off of the rush, and play an even faster brand of hockey than they managed last season.
With Canucks training camp now officially underway in Penticton, let's open the notebook and take you into a few of the major trends, observations and storylines that we're tracking at the outset of the 2024-25 Canucks campaign.
Thatcher Demko speaks
Rocking a new goatee, a blue Canucks hoodie and a dark green ball cap, Demko stepped in front of the microphones and cameras, ready to shed light on his injury and absence at the start of Canucks training camp.
Demko didn't have to step into the spotlight like this. He had no obligation to speak to the media because he's not a regular participant in training camp. He wanted this opportunity to clear the air — so much so that Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin declined to talk about Demko's health during Tuesday's press conference, in deference to his star goaltender, noting that the 2024 Vezina nominee would address his status directly on Day 1 of camp.
"I'm a grown man. I feel like you guys have been kept in the dark all summer," Demko explained. "Obviously, I'm not at training camp and I'm sure that you guys see that as a big deal and it is a big deal. I thought that I'd be out there. Out of respect for you guys, I thought I'd address it. I don't want there to be any mixed messaging (where) Tocc's telling you guys one thing and Patrik's telling you another. We're all on the same page."
Over the next 11 minutes, Demko provided refreshingly forthcoming, largely transparent commentary on the state of his injury and rehab process. The biggest takeaway is that he's dealing with a rare, unique muscle injury that's challenging to treat because there isn't a readily available body of research on the unnamed muscular ailment.
"There's not one case of a goaltender or a hockey player in general (who's had this injury)," said Demko. "It's been wild. It's been part of the frustration is just not having a ton of information. You're kind of just going into it blindfolded. It can be scary at times, I think we've done a good job of handling that as a group with the medical staff and organization."
The unprecedented nature of Demko's injury explains why his recovery has been nonlinear and unpredictable and why there's still no concrete timeline for his return.
"As a competitor, I think you kinda lie to yourself in a playoff situation and I thought maybe I was a little further ahead than I was in hindsight," he said when asked why he went from being close to a playoff return to not being ready for camp. "I'll say I did hit a bit of a wall in the summer as far as the recovery went and we did see a little lack of progress for a couple months ... the last two or three weeks we've seen a ton of progress."
Demko also revealed that he had a minor operation this offseason unrelated to his current injury. He said that it only took two weeks to recover from the procedure.
Big picture, you'd have to imagine that the club will need to work with Demko to adjust his workload — both in terms of games played and training. It's already something he's been putting deliberate thought toward.
"I think it comes down to just a little bit of maturity, quite frankly," Demko said about tweaking his training moving forward. "I just kind of have one gear and that's just to go as hard as I can and try to get better every day.
"(I'm) just learning that there's ways to get better and maintain your system of play and stay sharp and at the same time (take) care of your body. "I've done a lot of work with consultants and things like that this summer to address that (and) just picking people's brains about different ways to go about it ... it's something I'm confident I can implement this year."
Demko has made promising progress over the last 2-3 weeks. He was on the ice early in the morning for a rigorous workout and drills before meeting reporters, and for the most part that's what the club is focusing on.
"Right now we don't look at target dates. Demko is having good days, and that's good for us. That's what we look at."
While Demko clarified that he has full confidence he'll make a 100 percent recovery, with no timeline and the understanding that this is an unprecedented injury for an NHL goaltender, it was hard not to come out of his remarkable scrum with a sense that this is a storyline that will add a level of uncertainty that could loom over this season. Or at the very least over this preseason.
And to some extent, that concern was furthered by the pace and offensive emphasis of the club's first training camp day.
With the club working non-stop on rush drills and regroups, Vancouver's goaltending depth was sorely tested throughout Thursday's sessions. It was a shooting gallery. An endless slew of top NHL scorers ventilating Canucks goaltenders with a steady diet of high-speed shots and three-way passing plays.
"For the other goalies it's a competition," Tocchet said. "It's fun, it's to see who can step (up)."
"There were so many shots out there that I can't tell who is good or not out there, but it's hard on the goalies, there's three-on-ones, we're throwing stuff that's not really fair to the goalies sometimes, but we want them to hang in there."
Asked if he's comfortable with his options in net, Tocchet cited the club's robust defensive game as a reason for confidence despite the lingering uncertainty that surrounds his star puck stopper.
"Well, I'll tell you right now, the way this team defends and the way we play without the puck: I'm comfortable (with our goaltending)," Tocchet said. "We have a certain way we want to play and hopefully take pressure off the goalie whether it's (Demko), Artūrs Šilovs or whoever."
Reading too much into lines
Tocchet beseeched the media on Wednesday not to read too much into his lineup combinations on the opening day of training camp, but deprived of morning skate lineup tweets and the endless chatter they create in the Vancouver hockey market, the Canucks bench boss had to know that his pleas would fail to be heard.
"Oh, yeah, I know!" Tocchet laughed, when the subject of his first day line combinations was put to him following the first day of camp.
When Vancouver took the ice on Thursday morning at the South Okanagan Events Centre, they did so with some interesting groups and some fascinating lineup and defense pair combinations.
Among the headline items for us to pore over, Filip Hronek and Quinn Hughes opened camps in different groups — not just on different pairs. Top prospect Jonathan Lekkerimäki was given a first look on a top-six line with Elias Pettersson (centre) and Jake DeBrusk , while fellow top-5 Canucks prospect Elias Pettersson (the defender) opened camp on a pair with Hronek. Noah Juulsen drew the first look alongside Hughes.
The lines from Group A, the group that started and ended first during Day 1 of training camp, looked like this:
While Group B went through line rushes and drills in this configuration:
During Tocchet's time in Vancouver, we've learned to trust that the Canucks bench boss is a fundamentally honest guy. So, to some extent, we should take Tocchet at his word and not read too much into the Vancouver lineup.
For example, as Tocchet explained, this may not necessarily be a hard and fast audition for Lekkerimäki in the top six and Pettersson (the defender) in the top four.
"Not the first day," Tocchet said. "You've got a young Pettersson out there with him and I like seeing guys play with different guys. We know that Hughes and Hronek are really good together, so it's just the first day, I just want to see some guys play with some of our veterans.
"The old school way of thinking back in the day was coaches thought you had to earn your way up," Tocchet continued, by way of explanation. "I think it's a different world. I think it's important they hang with the veteran guys, see what they're doing, how they're preparing before practice. And watching their skill out there.
"I saw Petey talking to (Lekkerimäki) after a regroup drill 'go here, go there' and I think that's invaluable."
Tocchet went on to add that he'd move his line combinations around in the days ahead, noting that it's "important for other guys to get acclimated."
Some lineup combinations, however, do tell us more than others. DeBrusk with Pettersson isn't just a one-day look-see, for example, and neither is Danton Heinen getting the first shot at flanking Vancouver's top duo of J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser .
"I wanted to put them together right away and see," Tocchet said of his top-line combination on Thursday, "Then I wanted Pettersson with Lekkerimäki to show him the ropes ... So that's the method to our madness."
If there was one real surprise in how the Canucks lined up, from our perspective anyway, it was that the club put Conor Garland and Nils Höglander together. Höglander and Garland have had some success together in the past — under Bruce Boudreau they memorably combined on a waterbug line with Sheldon Dries that skated the division-winning version of the Calgary Flames off of the ice — but they played just 91 minutes together at five-on-five last season. For context, that's only two minutes more than Höglander spent with Anthony Beauvillier at even strength last season, and Beauvillier was traded away less than two months into the season!
"Garland can play anywhere," Tocchet noted, "he meshes with everybody."
Garland may be able to complement just about anyone in the Canucks lineup, but there's no question that the absence of Dakota Joshua as he recovers from his surgery to remove a cancerous tumour , destabilizes one of Vancouver's key top-nine duos. Arguably the key duo, frankly, given how much Tocchet values his third line and given Garland and Joshua's line was such an essential engine for the Canucks at five-on-five last season.
And it was something of a surprise to see the Canucks assemble a Garland and Höglander line on Thursday partly because they're both somewhat undersized. In fact, it's a storyline to watch for in the early part of the season. With Joshua absent and Vasili Podkolzin dealt to the Edmonton Oilers , Vancouver could enter the season lacking some size on the front end of their lineup.
Could that open up an opportunity for a player like Sammy Blais , who is at Canucks camp on a professional tryout agreement?
"Sammy played for the St. Louis Blues when they won the Cup and stuff so he's got some pedigree, so I want to see if he can step up and supply some of the stuff that Dakota (Joshua) does," Tocchet said plainly.
"I don't know the target for (Joshua), but he'll be back soon," Tocchet added on the concept of team size, "And we've got some big D, so we don't have a small team."
We learned a few things about how the Canucks are looking at their lineup on Thursday, but for the most part, the competition for jobs is just beginning. Now we'll see how much the lineup changes, and which players get significant auditions as camp and the exhibition schedule roll along.
The Jonathan Lekkerimäki era begins
Lekkerimäki's speed and one-on-one skill as a dynamic neutral zone puck transporter stood out in Penticton. It came better than advertised.
When he's not attacking downhill, however, we've noticed that Vancouver's prized winger prospect isn't as involved in driving play during extended in-zone offensive zone sequences. Part of that may come down to learning how to support the puck and making sharper off-puck reads and decisions to get open in dangerous areas.
Another observation we made during Day 1 of training camp, however, is that his edge work with the puck down low in the offensive zone could be sharper. During the regroup and odd-man rush drills at camp on Thursday, for example, Lekkerimäki looked wildly lethal. He had a stretch on the academy ice sheet late in Group A's session where he converted on six consecutive shots, repeatedly and impressive beating Jiří Patera .
We had the impression, however, in drills where Lekkerimäki was tasked with playing more of an area game that he wasn't dynamic or explosive at changing directions or building small-area speed to create separation against defenders.
Now he's young so there's plenty of time for him to improve his small-area quickness, but especially as a smaller winger, he should be studying Garland and Höglander to identify how they spin off checks and create space for themselves to generate scoring opportunities down low. If he can improve there, he'll be a more dangerous creator in small-area play and off the cycle, in addition to the already special, professional-level tool kit he possesses as a downhill attacker.
Big picture, this was a tremendous start for Lekkerimäki at his first NHL training camp, but there's still a strong chance that he'll spend a large chunk of this season in the AHL.
If he does, what type of production should the Canucks be hoping to realistically see from him?
To gauge that, we tracked the scoring numbers of some current top-six NHL players who were drafted in the first round and played in the AHL during their third season (Lekkerimäki is entering his draft-plus three campaign so we'd get a sense of these players' AHL numbers at the same age). Here's a look at some of the forwards we found.
Eight of the nine forwards on this list cleared the 0.5 points-per-game mark in the AHL as a draft-plus three player. Right off the bat, that seems like a meaningful bar for Lekkerimäki to eclipse. From there, you'll notice that there's variation — some players were around the point-per-mark if not higher, while others like Rickard Rakell , Owen Tippett and Tyler Toffoli were closer to the 0.8 points-per-game mark rate.
If Lekkerimäki opens this season in the American League and produces somewhere around the 0.6-0.85 points per game range (the equivalent of a 50-70 points per 82 games pace), there's a good chance that he'll eventually develop into a top-six player based on the forwards above who were similar in age and pedigree.
It's also interesting to note that six of those nine players ended up playing more than 10 NHL games in their draft-plus-three campaign.
Lekkerimäki may face a steeper learning curve than some of the other players on that list because he has a late birthday (he just turned 20 in late July) and because he's undersized. The names above are some useful references when thinking about Lekkerimäki's potential development in the AHL this season, and the historical probability — especially given what he's shown this week in Penticton — that he'll see at least some NHL action during his first North American professional campaign.
(Photo of Thatcher Demko: Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press via AP)
