This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Kevin Lankinen
Vancouver Canucks Goaltender
Undrafted, signed in September for the minimum, and 51 games and four shutouts later he had a five-year contract.
| Season | Team | GP | W | L | OTL | GA | GAA | SO | SA | SV% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-21 | CHI | 37 | 17 | 14 | 5 | 109 | 3.01 | 2 | 1204 | .909 |
| 2021-22 | CHI | 32 | 8 | 15 | 6 | 106 | 3.50 | 0 | 973 | .891 |
| 2022-23 | NSH | 19 | 9 | 8 | 1 | 49 | 2.75 | 0 | 583 | .916 |
| 2023-24 | NSH | 24 | 11 | 6 | 0 | 56 | 2.82 | 1 | 610 | .908 |
| 2024-25 | VAN | 51 | 25 | 15 | 10 | 132 | 2.62 | 4 | 1345 | .902 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 163 | 70 | 58 | 22 | 452 | 2.93 | 7 | 4715 | .904 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
25-15-10 in 51 games with a .9019, a 2.62 average and 4 shutouts, facing 1,345 shots.
He was signed on the eve of training camp for close to the league minimum, after Vancouver’s starter was hurt and the club had nobody. He played 51 games, was the reason it stayed in the race until March, and signed a five-year extension in January.
The Physical Game
6-2 and 190 and the technique is compact and orthodox. He plays a conventional depth, he is square almost without exception, and he does not travel further out than the shot requires.
The rebound control is decent and the lateral recovery is quick, which is the combination a smaller goaltender needs. The glove is solid. He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts with it.
The Mental Game
He has been a backup or a spare on four clubs in five seasons and has a career .9041, and the standing view was that he could not carry a starting job.
Fifty-one starts, four shutouts and a .9019 on a club that could not score is the answer to that, and the club’s answer was five years.
The Intangibles
Undrafted, and he came from Finland at 23 — 163 games with a career .9041 across four organisations.
He is 30. Thatcher Demko is 29 and has a career .9102 and played 23 games, which makes the crease the least settled part of a roster with a great many unsettled parts.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
“**Undrafted**, and he came from Finland at 23 — **163 games with a career .9041** across four organisations.”
“He plays a conventional depth, he is square almost without exception, and he does not travel further out than the shot requires.”
“The rebound control is decent and the lateral recovery is quick, which is the combination a smaller goaltender needs.”
“The rebound control is decent and the lateral recovery is quick, which is the combination a smaller goaltender needs.”
“He handles the puck adequately and does not start breakouts with it.”