Demko 'felt rusty' in return to action

Vancouver Canucks goaltender Thatcher Demko took as much time as he needed to get healthy enough to return to the crease, but the star netminder requires more reps to get up to game speed after losing his season debut on Tuesday night.

"Yeah, I mean, felt rusty for sure," Demko told Sportsnet's Iain MacIntyre. "Obviously, it's frustrating losing. I thought I could have played a couple of goals differently. I'm sure that there's stuff that I can pull to keep building. But obviously it's frustrating right now.

"There's a couple of things I thought that I can clean up that shouldn't take too much time. Just different reads and different ideas, positionally, things like that. I'm frustrated losing the game. I want to make a couple of those saves."

Demko made 21 saves in a 4-3 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues. The Blues controlled most of the contest at five-on-five despite the low shot count, outchancing the Canucks 24-14 while owning 60.34% of expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick.

Demko hurt his knee in the first round of last season's playoffs, and the injury kept him out of Vancouver's first 26 contests of 2024-25. He dressed as backup for a pair of games before getting his first start.

The Canucks felt having their No. 1 goalie back provided a boost despite the loss.

"I thought he was good tonight," head coach Rick Tocchet said. "It's good to see him in net; he looks big. I love seeing him back in. He's worked really hard, so I thought he did a great job for us tonight."

Demko's in his eighth season with Vancouver. He had a career year in 2023-24, finishing second in Vezina Trophy voting thanks to a 35-14-2 record and .918 save percentage.