Kevin Lankinen’s season has gone from bad to brutal, and Thursday night in Anaheim only dragged the numbers further down.
The Vancouver Canucks goalie gave up five goals on 22 shots in a 5-4 loss to the Ducks, finishing with a .773 save percentage in the game. That pushed his season mark to an NHL-worst .808 and left him at 1-8-0 on the year.
The slide shows up everywhere in the stat sheet. Among goaltenders who have played at least five games, Lankinen sits 56th in save percentage. The only name directly behind him is Montreal’s Jakub Dobes, who is 55th at .853, still well ahead of Lankinen’s number.
His goals-against average is ugly, too. Even after Thursday’s outing, Lankinen’s 6.03 GAA is the fifth-worst in NHL history for a goalie through his first nine games of a season. The only worse opening since then belongs to Vincent Tremblay, who posted a 6.06 GAA to start the 1979-80 season with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Vancouver’s problems in front of him haven’t helped. The Ducks went 3-for-3 on the power play Thursday, and that dropped the Canucks’ penalty-kill success rate to 63.2 per cent, second-worst in the league behind only the Los Angeles Kings at 61.5 per cent.
“There was good push there, and I thought we actually played a pretty tight game in terms of 5-on-5 at least,” Canucks winger Jake DeBrusk said after the team’s latest loss. “Obviously, special teams were the difference tonight.
“We’re taking penalties in the offensive zone, hooking, holdings, just bad penalties at bad times, and it’s costing us. It’s cost us the whole year, and that’s on everyone in the room.”
The loss left the last-place Canucks at 3-13-1. The Chicago Blackhawks, at 4-10-1, are the only other team with fewer than 10 points, and they still have two games in hand on Vancouver.
With Thatcher Demko still out after the hip surgery he had in January, the Canucks have been forced to lean on Lankinen. Demko is expected to remain sidelined until at least Christmas, leaving Lankinen and waiver claim Leevi Merilainen as Vancouver’s options in goal.
Merilainen, claimed from the Ottawa Senators before the season, is 2-5-1 with a .897 save percentage and a 3.31 GAA.
Lankinen’s own track record makes the current stretch stand out even more. He went 11-27-5 last season with a .875 save percentage and a 3.70 GAA, after a much stronger 2024-25 campaign in which he finished 25-15-10 with a .902 save percentage and a 2.62 GAA.
The Helsinki, Finland native signed a five-year, $22.5 million contract during the 2024-25 season and carries a $4.5 million cap hit through 2029-30.
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