Kevin Lankinen bet on himself this season. On Friday, that bet paid off.
After two seasons as a backup with the Nashville Predators where he made fewer than 20 starts each season behind Juuse Saros, Lankinen wanted to prove that he could be a starting goaltender and went to free agency. The only trouble is that starting jobs are few and far between in the NHL, so Lankinen went through the entire off-season without signing a contract.
When he finally signed with the Vancouver Canucks after the start of training camp, it seemed like his gamble had failed. His previous contract was a one-year deal worth $2 million; he signed a one-year deal with the Canucks worth just $875,000.
But Lankinen was just playing the long game.
Canucks re-sign Kevin Lankinen to a five-year deal worth $4.5 million per year
Thatcher Demko was on the shelf for an unknown amount of time to start the season thanks to a bizarre injury to his popliteus muscle and the Canucks’ only other option was the untested Arturs Silovs, leaving plenty of room for Lankinen to step in and seize the starter’s role. When Silovs faltered, Lankinen did exactly that, proving that he could handle a heavy workload.
Lankinen has started 32 of the Canucks’ 55 games this season and has been the team’s best goaltender by a wide margin. His .905 save percentage may not jump off the page, but it’s solidly above the league’s .902 average and well above Demko’s .891 and Silovs’ .847 save percentages. In many ways, Lankinen saved the Canucks' season.
On Friday, the Canucks’ rewarded Lankinen’s efforts with the first long-term contract of the 29-year-old’s career, re-signing him to a five-year contract extension with an average annual value of $4.5 million.
The contract comes with some trade protection: a full no-move clause for the first two years, then a modified no-trade clause for the next three years that allows him to name 15 teams to which he would not accept a trade.
The structure of the contract is also interesting. He has a $2.5 million signing bonus for the first year and a $2 million signing bonus in the last three years, but no signing bonus in the second year, which covers the 2026-27 season.
While salary is paid out throughout the season, signing bonuses are paid out in a lump sum upon signing the contract or on July 1 in subsequent years. They’re also paid out even if there’s a lockout, which is why it’s interesting that Lankinen doesn’t have a signing bonus for the 2026-27 season. The current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NHL and NHLPA expires in 2026, so there’s the potential for a lockout that season, which could mean Lankinen receiving no money at all that year.
That’s a potentially significant concession by Lankinen and his agent. In negotiations, that could have been something conceded by his side in exchange for something like a no-movement clause or a higher cap hit.
Lankinen has given the Canucks steady, reliable goaltending
So, why did the Canucks go long-term on a goaltender who has just 146 games of NHL experience at the age of 29?
To some, it might look like an overpay. AFP Analytics projected a two-year contract for Lankinen at around $3.3 million per year, but that projection might be based on some out-of-date comparables.
Lankinen’s $4.5 million cap hit comes in below new contracts for Logan Thompson ($5.85 million), Joey Daccord ($5 million), and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen ($4.75 million), who are all signed for 5 or 6 years. In other words, Lankinen’s deal is what you might expect for a second-tier starting goaltender.
The Canucks are confident in Lankinen, who is about as low-maintenance as goaltenders get. The soft-spoken Finn is well-liked by his teammates in the room and trusted on the ice.
That trust seems well-placed. While Lankinen doesn’t have the longest track record, he’s proven he can hold his own with 30+ starts this season and in his first NHL stop with the Chicago Blackhawks. That makes him, at the very least, a 1B option in a goaltending tandem.
It should also be noted that his .905 save percentage is mostly a reflection of a few bad starts and he’s been more consistently good than that would suggest.
Using the Quality Start metric from Hockey Reference, Lankinen has had a Quality Start in 62.5% of his games. Among the 44 NHL goaltenders with at least 20 starts this season, that ranks 11th in the NHL, alongside the likes of Jake Oettinger, Darcy Kuemper, Ilya Sorokin, and Jacob Markstrom.
As much as the Canucks got incredible value out of Lankinen this season on a minuscule $875,000 cap hit, banking on finding similar value in the future could be a crapshoot. Committing to a goaltender they know and trust is a lot more comfortable.
Lankinen provides insurance for Demko's injury woes
Of course, there’s another reason why the Canucks committed to Lankinen: it’s becoming harder and harder to trust in Demko to stay healthy.
It might be a coincidence but Lankinen signed his new contract shortly after news broke that Demko is week-to-week with another injury, one that will keep him from traveling with the team on their five-game road trip. But Demko's injury troubles surely played a role in wanting to get Lankinen locked up long-term.
When fully healthy, Demko is a Vezina-caliber goaltender, but Demko has rarely been fully healthy. These last three seasons have seen Demko miss a significant amount of time with lower-body injuries. He missed 35 games with a groin injury in the 2022-23 season, 14 regular season games with a knee injury in 2023-24 and another 12 playoff games, and 24 games this season as he continued to recover from that knee injury.
Along with missing a couple of games with a back injury in January, Demko will now miss at least five more games with an unknown lower-body injury.
At the very least, Lankinen is insurance in case Demko continues to struggle with injuries. At the most, Lankinen will replace Demko if the Canucks decide to move on.
Demko is signed through the 2025-26 season at a $5 million cap hit and will then be an unrestricted free agent. That gives the Canucks another season to see if Demko can return to form and decide whether to re-sign him, trade him, or let him go to free agency.
That would mean paying $9.5 million next season for Demko and Lankinen, which is not an unreasonable amount to pay a goaltending tandem. The New York Rangers will be paying $11.5 million per season just for Igor Shesterkin.
The question for Demko’s future is how much he should be paid on his next contract, balancing his potential Vezina-caliber play with his injury woes. If he wants to be paid like other Vezina candidates like Andrei Vasilevskiy and Connor Hellebuyck, he’ll be far too expensive to keep alongside a $4.5 million Lankinen.
If that means Demko moves on from Vancouver in the future, Lankinen should, in theory, provide the Canucks with solid goaltending while they search for their next star in net, whether from within their own prospect system or elsewhere.
