Was Now The Best Time To Recall Thatcher Demko?

On Thursday the Vancouver Canucks recalled prospect Thatcher Demko from the AHL and waived newly acquired Mike McKenna with the intention of sending him to their AHL affiliate in Utica.  On Friday McKenna was claimed off waivers by the Flyers before he could report. Now their farm team is left with one of the AHL's worst back-up goalies (Ivan Kulbakov, 3.98 GAA and .880 SV%) to lead them through a very busy stretch of their schedule (5 games in the next 8 days). The Canucks themselves have a light schedule over the next 2 weeks, which means limited opportunities for Demko to start. 

Demko already missed a big chunk of the season with a concussion, so at this point the best thing for his development is to play hockey games. If they awarded a Vezina trophy for each month of the season, Jakob Markstrom would have been the December winner in a landslide. It has this team sniffing a playoff spot (the fan base is split on whether or not this is even a good thing). Are you now taking the starters duties away from your red hot goalie, or will Demko be the back-up?  You need Demko to get regular playing time and the Canucks play 3 games over the next 11 days.

I'm not suggesting that the decision to recall Demko was itself a bad decision, but rather the timing. He's the future in Vancouver and he's going to be coming up eventually. Losing McKenna sure doesn't seem like a big deal in a vacuum. He's not any better than your average waiver wire claim. But if you dig a little deeper and look at Utica's upcoming schedule and the Canuck's schedule, then the timing of the recall and waive looks a little more negligent.

The next rebuttal is that the front office did not expect McKenna would get claimed. It wasn't their intention to leave Utica in this difficult situation, it was an accident. Okay, but there has been a unique game of back-up goalie "musical chairs" going on in the league this season and at this particular moment several goalies are injured. There was every reason to believe that this was at least a real possibility, regardless of how good or bad McKenna may be.

I'm sure Travis Green wants to make playoffs. He'll get Coach of the Year consideration if he takes a team many projected to finish near the bottom of the standings and gets them into the postseason. Green will want to start his hot goalie often until either the Canucks fall out of playoff contention, or Markstrom falters (which hasn't happened yet) or is injured. It's questionable how much Demko will even be able to play while he's up. There is every reason to question the timing of this recall, especially given the shit sandwich you've passed to your AHL affiliate (who needs to sell tickets too).

Jim Benning is almost certainly going to put in a claim for the next goalie put on waivers, or make a minor trade for a guy who at least meets the minimum threshold of quality to play NHL or AHL (which Kulbakov does not). Hopefully this doesn't take too long. The Canucks could find themselves in a very perilous situation if they run into any injury problems between the pipes in the immediate future.