The Vancouver Canucks placed Filip Chytil on the Injured Reserve on Friday, after he suffered a shoulder injury in the team’s preseason game on Thursday against the Edmonton Oilers.
The move to the IR was made retroactive to Sept. 24, and per The Athletic’s Thomas Drance, the team is considering Chytil week-to-week at this point with a muscular strain.
“As nasty as that looked, he came down on the shoulder, and it’s more of a muscular strain,” Canucks general manager Ryan Johnson said on Friday regarding Chytil’s injury, per Drance.
The 27-year-old Chytil has struggled to stay on the ice since joining the Canucks in January of 2025, where he was acquired from the New York Rangers as part of the return in the J.T. Miller trade.
A concussion restricted Chytil to just 15 games in his first season in Vancouver, and last year he appeared in 12 games while missing time with concussion issues, migraines and a facial fracture suffered in practice.
Chytil has five goals and nine points in 27 games as a member of the Canucks. In 378 games with the Rangers, Chytil scored 80 goals and tallied 173 points over eight seasons.
Goaltender Thatcher Demko is still recovering from hip surgery in January that cut his 2025-26 season short, and is not expected to be ready for the season opener.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Johnson noted that Demko does not yet have a timeline for a potential return to action, and noted that it would be reasonable to assume that Demko will not be active when the Canucks set their 23-man roster for the beginning of the regular season.
Earlier in the day, the Canucks claimed goaltender Leevi Merilainen off of waivers from the Ottawa Senators.
Demko finished second in Vezina Trophy voting following the 2023-24 season, but the 30-year-old netminder has struggled to stay on the ice in the two seasons since. He appeared in 23 games two years ago before suiting up for just 20 games last season.
The native of San Diego, Calif. has appeared in 262 career NHL games, all with the Canucks, and has a 2.81 goals-against average and a .909 save percentage.
