With Thatcher Demko's injury timeline unclear, breakout playoff performer Arturs Silovs could also miss the start of the Vancouver Canucks' season.

There's no clear picture of who the Vancouver Canucks will have in net in October.

It could be their top tandem of Thatcher Demko and Arturs Silovs between the pipes when the NHL's regular season starts. It could also be just one of them or neither.

That's the latest glimpse of the Canucks' crease after the Latvian hockey federation explained why the 23-year-old was left off its roster for this weekend's men's Olympic hockey qualifying tournament in Riga, Latvia.

On Thursday, the federation posted to social media in Latvian that while it initially planned to have Silovs for the tournament, he did not recover quickly enough from knee ligament inflammation.

Latvia added, however, that Silovs' injury could threaten his start to the season with the Canucks. 

Silovs played a crucial role for Latvia at the 2022 and 2023 World Championships. In 2022, he outperformed Elvis Merzlikins with the tournament's top save percentage of .952. He then earned a sculpture of him in Riga for leading the country to a bronze medal in 2023. He was the tournament's best goaltender that year and the MVP.

With that in mind, the injury is significant enough to not name him to the roster and have the DEL's Kristers Gudlevskis, free agent Gustavs Grigals and Liiga's Eriks Vitols instead.

But the news comes as Thomas Drance and Rick Dhaliwal reported in The Athletic that Demko won't be ready for training camp and pre-season games. The Canucks are reportedly still hopeful he'll be ready for the regular season as of Oct. 9, but that is still in question.

Demko dealt with injury issues later last regular season and then couldn't play after Game 1 of the playoffs. The since-departed Casey DeSmith played two games, but it was third-stringer Silovs who took the reins, played 10 games and recorded a 5-5-0 record with a 2.91 goals-against average, .898 save percentage and one shutout.

The severity and timeline of both goaltenders' injuries remain to be determined, which will matter as the Canucks aim to improve on last year's breakout, sixth-overall finish in the NHL.

Either way, training camp and the pre-season are exactly when the Canucks can prepare the next goaltenders in line, 25-year-old Jiri Patera and 24-year-old Nikita Tolopilo, in case one or both of them will start the season in The Show.

Patera spent the last four seasons in the Vegas Golden Knights' organization, having an 11-10-4 record, 2.99 goals-against average and .903 save percentage for the AHL's Henderson Silver Knights. Tolopilo, meanwhile, had a 20-13-1 record for the Abbotsford Canucks last season with a 2.83 goals-against average and .905 save percentage.

As for the Olympic qualifying tournament, 12 teams will compete from Aug. 29 to Sept. 1, with three spots in the 2026 Winter Games in Milan at stake. Slovakia, Latvia and Denmark are among the nations competing, including NHLers Nikolaj Ehlers and Frederik Andersen (Denmark), Mats Zuccarrello (Norway) and Juraj Slafkovsky (Slovakia) as some participants. 

Follow TheHockeyNews.com/International for Olympic qualifying coverage.

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