Report: Canucks’ Thatcher Demko’s injury is to the Popliteus muscle

It appears that we have a bit more context about the injury that Vancouver Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko is dealing with right now.

While it’s not confirmed by Demko or the Canucks, goaltender analyst Kevin Woodley joined Sportsnet 650’s Halford and Brough on Monday and brought to light that Demko is dealing with an injury to the Popliteus muscle.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty around this, around this injury, and as much as he believes he can get to 100% and seems to be in a really good place the past couple of weeks, after, as he said, a month off… there remains a lot of uncertainty about the injury'” said Woodley. “The one thing I can clear up, one thing in terms of the uncertainty, there’s no longer uncertainty about what it is. So you guys can get your Web MD out and look up Popliteus.

“It is a thin triangle-shaped muscle behind the back of the knee. And that, evidently, is where the injury has occurred. Whether it’s a tear, to what degree, we don’t know, but this is basically a muscle deep behind under several layers of other muscles deep on the back of your knee. It doesn’t do much. It sort of attaches to the top inside of the femur and then back to the tibia on the top of the other side.

“For runners, it’s what unlocks the knee joint from straight, it’s actually a pretty negligible effect on the flexion of the knee, but it pulls the lateral meniscus back and out of the way of flexion. It is a small but somewhat significant ligament, and I’m not sure the degree of the damage or whether he’s pulled it off the bone at the ligament, or what, but it is super rare. I’ve talked to a couple of people that have been doing this at the NHL level for 30 years. They’ve never seen it. So everything they’re telling us tracks, and despite it being small and somewhat insignificant, there’s obviously uncertainty that comes when there’s no sort of prescribed way to either improve it. Like, literally when you first look it up, one of the first things you’ll see is the sort of healing time is anywhere from three to 16 weeks. So, nothing like nailing it down, right?”

Demko originally suffered the injury during Game 1 of the first round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Nashville Predators. He had been recovering from the injury throughout the offseason, but revealed at the start of training camp last week that he hit a wall in his recovery at some point during the summer.

Demko has been on the ice for every session the Canucks held in training camp last week and has progressed well over the past few weeks, but there’s currently no timetable for return.

Demko is coming off of the best season of his career, where he had a 35-14-2 record, a .918% save percentage, 5 shutouts, and 25.83 goals saved above expected. He also had a .917% save% in his one game in the playoffs, where he also got the win.

The Canucks find themselves with some goaltending problems early on in the season with Demko’s return unknown, which means that Arturs Silovs will take over the starting role for the time being. The Canucks also signed Kevin Lankinen over the weekend as insurance during Demko’s absence.