Canucks Have Offered Kevin Lankinen A Contract

In recent weeks, the Canucks have been offering PTO deals to some veteran goalies as some insurance with Thatcher Demko’s health still in some question.  After being unable to get either Kevin Lankinen or Antti Raanta to agree to a tryout, they’ve now gone a step further.  Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK and The Athletic reports (Twitter link) that Vancouver has made a one-year full contract offer to Lankinen.  However, the offer was believed to be for less than $1MM, a price tag he doesn’t appear to be willing to accept at this time.

The 29-year-old made $2MM last season in Nashville so Vancouver’s offer would certainly represent a sizable pay cut.  However, the Canucks have less than $200K in cap space per PuckPedia and have made it known that they don’t want to go into using LTIR.  Accordingly, even to make that offer work, they’d have to drop a skater off their roster to be able to afford Lankinen, effectively having to carry three goalies heading into the season if Demko isn’t able to play.

Lankinen spent the last two years with the Predators and put up solid numbers overall, posting a 2.79 GAA and a .912 SV% in 43 games over that span.  Those are certainly above-average for a second-string option which is likely why his camp has been holding out in the hopes of landing a more substantial offer.  However, barring an injury of some significance, most teams have their goaltending set so that better offer might not materialize for a while yet if at all if he continues to wait.

The fact that the Canucks have opted to make a full offer to Lankinen would imply that they remain concerned about Demko’s recovery from a knee injury sustained early in the playoffs last spring.  If they felt he was on track to return on time or even a few games into the season, Vancouver could simply run with Arturs Silovs and new third-stringer Jiri Patera for a couple of weeks and get by that way.  Silovs had a good run in the playoffs and could easily handle the starting role for a handful of games early on.

But if they feel their best option now is to get someone on a full-season deal, it would seem as if there is at least the potential for Demko’s recovery period to drag out even longer.  That type of uncertainty is hardly ideal with training camps now less than a week away.  Whether that will push them to up their offer or if they’ll hold out hope that Lankinen will have a change of heart and accept their most recent offer remains to be seen.