Canucks: Thatcher Demko needs hip surgery. Again.

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It was the news that Vancouver Canucks fans were dreading.

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Goalie Thatcher Demko will undergo hip surgery in the next month or so. His season is finished.

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Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin said in a statement Tuesday that the decision was made after advice from team doctors and specialists. Allvin said last week that Demko was consulting specialists abroad. The team and Demko expect he’ll be fully fit and ready to go by the time training camp opens in September.

“He’s fought through it for a while now,” Canucks head coach Adam Foote said Tuesday.

Demko had another issue — damage to the popliteus muscle in the back of his left knee — that kept him out for most of last season. This hip issue is unrelated. It’s also not believed to be related to a hip issue he dealt with in his youth; he had surgery in 2016.

He hasn’t played since Jan. 10 when he left mid-game. He missed time earlier in the season with what was at first described as “soreness.”

Demko first started feeling off on Nov. 7 in advance of a tough back-to-back weekend of games against Columbus and Colorado. To that point, he had been playing well and was keeping the otherwise struggling Canucks afloat.

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Coming off his struggles the year before, Demko truly believed that with a full summer to recover from his difficult 2024-25 season, and also prepare for 2025-26, that he would be back to the form he had shown in the regular season in 2023-24, when he was a finalist for the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender.

But it wasn’t to be. After sitting out those two games in January to recuperate, he started the next game against the Winnipeg Jets but lasted just a period before leaving in discomfort. He missed a month, then, upon his return, backstopped the Canucks to a trio of surprising wins after Quinn Hughes was traded.

Things still weren’t right and his game became stiffer and leakier: over the final six starts of his now-concluded season he gave up 22 goals.

It’s never easy to watch an athlete in his prime deal with injuries; for Demko this has been a brutal run, watching his body fail him. The will is there, but more and more his body is presenting issues.

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“You could tell in his game and his discomfort,” Foote added.

And the lack of ability to perform really started to weigh on the goalie, the coach implied. “It gets to you,” he said.

This is the fourth season in a row that Demko has dealt with a major injury; he did manage to make 51 regular-season starts in 2023-24 before damaging the popliteus muscle in the first game of the playoffs. Recovery from that injury, plus surgery for an unrelated issue, kept him out until December 2024.

He then suffered further injuries later in the season; in all he played just 23 games in 2024-25.

In 2022-23, he suffered a groin injury that kept him out for two months.

His last full season without an injury was 2021-22, when he made 64 starts.

Tyler Myers has been around Demko for a long time; the veteran defenceman first signed with the Canucks in 2019, not long after Demko became a full-time NHL regular, backing up Jacob Markstrom.

He said his teammate has always been resilient and will be again.

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“Demmer’s gone through a lot … ” Myers said. “I don’t think a lot of guys could handle what he’s gone through … I think a lot of guys would be out of the league already. And it just goes to show what kind of pro he is and how much he takes care of himself. He’s going to approach this situation the same way, like he always has, and I think a lot of good is going to come out of it.

“I think it’s a good opportunity for him to get himself to 100 per cent, to come in ready next year,” Myers added. “He’s going to have the time that I think he hasn’t had in the past to do that. So in a lot of ways, I’m happy for him. I know it’s tough, but you know, I’m excited for what’s going to come out of it.”

The Canucks signed Demko to a three-year, US$25.5 million extension last summer, which kicks in next season.

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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