Canucks Showing "Lack of Confidence" in Arturs Silovs?

The Vancouver Canucks continue to pursue UFA goaltender Kevin Lankinen, despite the PTO agreement they signed Dylan Ferguson to late Sunday night. But what does this never-ending dance with Lankinen (who turned down a PTO, and won't agree to Vancouver's full contract offer) indicate?

According to Don Taylor, co-host of Donnie & Dhali with Rick Dhaliwal, it indicates "alarm bells". The first thing the pair is worried about is the prolonged injury status of No. 1 goalie Thatcher Demko. "It tells me that Demko is going to be out a bit longer than they expect," said Dhaliwal.

But then he went one step further:

The other thing that tells me is that they don't have a lot of confidence in (Arturs) Silovs and (Jiri) Patera starting the season. Let's say Demko can't start the season and misses 6, 7, 8, 9 games. Are you, Don, comfortable with Silovs and Patera? I'm not. I'd sure like to see Lankinen here.

To be fair, Silovs did step in admirably during the playoffs when Demko went down last spring, but Taylor cautioned that with, "Over the course of an 82-game season, I'm not so sure how much confidence I would have."

Adding to the concern is that there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about Demko's health.

Head coach Rick Tocchet says that "We don't have a target date. There's no targeting. He's getting better every day... and that's what we want."

"Why don't you have a target date?" asks Dhaliwal, rhetorically. "Why is there no target date here?! The fact they don't have a target date is very... strange."

And so Lankinen, who probably feels he has some bargaining power, with all this going on, is continuing to wait for the Canucks to come up in their offer. He earned $2 million last year with the Nashville Predators and did a fine job as Juuse Saros's backup, going 11-6-0 with a 2.82 goals-against average and a .908 save percentage.