‘It’s Brutal, Quite Frankly’: Canucks’ Thatcher Demko Details Injury Difficulties Through The Past Few Seasons

Thatcher Demko believes that this is it. 

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For the past two years, Demko said, he’s been “playing with zero degrees of internal rotation in the hip.” Since starting Game 1 of the Vancouver Canucks’ 2024 Stanley Cup Playoff series against the Nashville Predators and missing every post-season game after that, Demko has only played in 43 games for the Canucks. He didn’t make his season-debut in 2024–25 until December 10 and missed two more week to months-long stretches of time until ultimately finishing the season with 23 games played. This season saw him take a weekend away for maintenance, miss a month of action from November 11 to December 11, and exit a January 10 game against the Toronto Maple Leafs that would be his last of the season. 

To put it in Demko’s words, “it’s brutal, quite frankly.” 

But Demko’s most recent operation, a hip surgery that ended his 2025–26 season early at the end of January, looks like it could provide the solution to all of the injury problems he’s faced these past few seasons — according to the goaltender.   

“I think that this last operation that I had is going to be the answer for all that. So it’s kind of like that one last time going through all this, hopefully,” Demko explained during Vancouver’s end-of-season media availability on Friday. “Obviously it’s a game, and you don’t know what the future holds as far as injuries. Anyone can get hurt any night, but just some of the nagging stuff I had, hopefully kind of dissipates. We’ve addressed the larger picture. That’s kind of where my mind frame is at right now.”  

The decision to end his season early to undergo this procedure was not taken lightly. Demko took on the opinions of many within the Canucks organization, weighing how this could impact both him and his play long-term, as well as the team moving forward. 

“We had glimpses, kind of coming into this season, that there might be some underlying problems that were causing some of the issues that I was having. It is such a major surgery that I had done that it was kind of like our last resort. You’re trying to play through things and find a way to navigate through some of that without having to take the drastic measures that we ended up taking. But I think at a certain point, we just realized that I wasn’t really able to, one, stay healthy, and two, I wasn’t really able to play at the standard that I’m used to playing at, so we sat down as a group, sat down with with Jim Rutherford and our medical staff, and made the decision that this was kind of the best thing for me moving forward.” 

As heavy of a toll it is that injuries take on players from a physical standpoint, the mental weight of constant ailments can make things even worse. For a player like Demko, who eagerly wants to factor into his team’s success, missing more and more time due to injury feels like even more of a mental burden. 

“You have to have a sense of positivity going through all those situations, and keep telling yourself that maybe this time it’ll be different. You have this hope that you build up even when you don’t feel like it, and just to kind of have that let down every time, time and time again, it’s tough. And I have great friends, the guys sitting up here with me right now (Filip Hronek, Elias Pettersson, Brock Boeser), they’ve been huge supports for me, other guys on the team too, my wife, medical staff — you do need a village just to keep you going.” 

Jan 2, 2026; Vancouver, British Columbia, CAN; Vancouver Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko (35) during a stop in play against the Seattle Kraken in the first period at Rogers Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bob Frid-Imagn Images

It’s been a little less than three months since Demko was ruled out for the remainder of the 2025–26 season to undergo hip surgery, but already, the goaltender feels positive about what it’s done for his progression. 

“I’ve already seen incredible strides in my movement, my mobility, and this will be a unique summer. I still have a ton of work to do. I’m excited for that work. I’m excited to kind of build it up from the ground-up, and get back to where I was that year that we were in the playoffs, and the year that I felt like myself.” 

While Demko may want to return to the form that he took on in the 2023–24 season — one that saw him finish as a runner-up for the Vezina Trophy after a strong 35–14–2 record and career-low 2.45 GAA — the team around him has certainly changed. Only Brock Boeser, Elias Pettersson, Teddy Blueger, Nils Höglander, Linus Karlsson, and Filip Hronek are left from the group that helped bring the Canucks to Game 7 of the Pacific Division Finals. The rebuilding stage may be daunting for many, but for Demko, the team’s status won’t deter him from wanting to compete for the Canucks. 

“I’ve said that I want to be here since the day I got drafted, regardless of what that looks like. Obviously this year wasn’t good enough from our perspective. A lot of things happened. I do think that we have a better team than what we showed this year. I think that we have a lot of really good pieces.” 

The next few seasons will be instrumental in the construction of a new Canucks team, culture, and identity. With Demko having taken the steps to try and regain his old form, his next task will be to help the team build themselves back up while remaining hopeful about his health. 

“I’m not playing and kind of going through this, I feel that passion and that fire kind of building every day, and watching to see what these guys have done leadership-wise and what they’ve been building the last few weeks and months here. I’ve never really felt this excited to play here and be a part of building something next year.” 

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