Kevin Lankinen played his cards right in the summer, writes Urheilu’s NHL correspondent Tommi Seppälä.
Tommi Seppälä
The goaltending situation in Vancouver was already confusing from the start. Yankee star Thatcher Demko has been sidelined with a mysterious injury since last spring. It is known to be a rare minor injury to the knee flexor muscle, and no one seems to have any information on the return schedule.
Vancouver had to react to the situation in the summer by hiring someone who had represented Nashville for the previous two seasons Kevin Lankinen29. The starter’s post was planned for the person who sensationally led Latvia to the bronze medals at the 2023 World Championships in Tampere For Arturs Silovs. Last spring, Silovs also played well in the NHL playoffs, where the Canucks advanced to the second round.
The situation has turned upside down.
Silovs got off to a bad start to the season and in the first two matches found the back of the net nine times. Out of the six matches, only one match has ended in victory for Silovs, with the save percentage dropping below 86.
On the other hand, Lankinen, who has been profiled as a reliable second guard in the NHL world for several years, succeeded immediately.
Lankinen lost his first game in overtime to Philadelphia, but then beat reigning champion Florida away from home. The goalkeeping race immediately started to turn in the Finn’s direction.
At the latest, the second shutout game of the fall against Boston on Wednesday morning cemented Lankinen’s position as the club’s number one goalkeeper until Demko returns. Lankinen has quietly risen to shared third place in the veskari victory statistics.
In this respect, we can talk about the hardest Finnish statistical bomb of the fall. Vancouver’s early season has been anything but high-quality, but Lankinen has won 10 of the 15 matches he has started.
In actual playing time, Lankinen has bent only three times.
The experience shows
Of course, one could also ask, are Lankinen’s mature takes really such a surprising thing?
Few must have noticed that Lankinen amassed what was considered to be the NHL’s elite scorer in two years Juuse Saros with practically identical statistics in Nashville. If you look at the deep data, Lankinen actually saved more goals-to-goals than Saros last season.
Of course, it’s a different thing to carry the responsibility of a starting pitcher and play every other night than to play less than twenty games in a season. This is exactly the step Lankinen is now taking in his career. The goal of Lankinen, who led Finland to the World Cup gold in Bratislava five summers ago, is not to make an NHL career as a second goaltender, but as a first goaltender.
The 29-year-old Lankinen is still a young man for a goalkeeper, but at the same time he is already a veteran on hard international ice. During the first months in Vancouver’s goal, it has been clearly visible that Lankinen is a pedantic world champion athlete who has played 127 NHL games, and Silovs is a 25-game NHL rookie – a bit of a slouch.
It is certain that, despite a couple of weaker games that the team manipulated and crunched the statistics, Lankinen’s moves have been noted around the league. Lankina has all the ingredients to become the number one goaltender at the NHL level, and this vision does not need to be built in the ecstasy of a moment based on one fall.
For the previous three seasons, only Saros has a better save percentage than Lank among the Finns. In average goals conceded, only later switched to Switzerland Antti Raanta wedge before this.
The dream of Lanki’s number one goalkeeper is alive and well.
Good calculation
Suomalaisvahti also deserves praise for his calculation skills. It is known that there was a more lucrative contract on offer in the summer, but Lankinen thought carefully about the best option for his career.
He went to Vancouver on a cheap ($875,000) one-year contract because he believed that British Columbia had the best opportunities to advance his career. Even in top-class Finnish goalkeeper coaching Marko Torenius under.
If the gaming device stops at the autumn model for the rest of the season, in the summer the phone will ring with a completely new frequency and then completely different numbers will be recorded in the new contract. And probably Lankinen’s role will also be something completely different from what it has been in his NHL career so far.