Where would the Vancouver Canucks be this season without Kevin Lankinen?
With Arturs Silovs struggling to start the season and Thatcher Demko’s timeline for a return still uncertain, Lankinen has been essential to the Canucks. With a sparkling .920 save percentage, Lankinen has helped the Canucks earn at least a point in all six of his starts and has been the starter for all four of the Canucks’ wins.
“It’s a huge acquisition by Patrik,” said head coach Rick Tocchet. “To grab him out of nowhere is huge…I don’t think he’s had a bad start. He’s been a factor in every game.”
One of the biggest reasons he’s been so good? According to Lankinen himself, it’s his favourite hobby: reading.
"When you switch your mind off of hockey, that's how you preserve energy"
Lankinen’s love of reading has been known for some time. He started an online book club with a publisher to help boost literacy for Finnish youth. For his efforts, he was named Vuoden Esikuva — Role Model of the Year — at the 2020 Finnish Sports Gala.
That love started with hockey books that caught his interest as a kid, then became a true passion as a teenager in high school.
“I always had that curious mind to learn things outside of hockey too,” said Lankinen. “I just always think that the better you are as a person, the better an athlete you are. The broader the view you have, I think that helps with perspective in hockey too. And reading has been a way for me to just detach a little bit and put my mind somewhere else.”
Lankinen doesn’t just pay lip service to literacy: he reads almost every night during the hockey season. Curling up with a good book is an essential part of the routine that helps him excel on the ice.
“When you switch your mind off of hockey, that's how you preserve energy,” said Lankinen. “Then when you get to the rink, you're dialed in again. You don't want to keep going 24/7, right? Because you’ve gotta be able to, like, converge your focus when the time is right.
“I think reading has been a really good help for me in that case, where I can activate some other parts of my brain and learn something new, and then when I get to the hockey rink, I feel refreshed for the love of the game.”
Winding down in the evening with a good book has also helped Lankinen with his sleeping habits, which is an essential part of life as a professional athlete.
“Especially on the road, I always have a book with me, whether if it's on the plane or at the hotel room,” said Lankinen. “I think it's a good way to get out of your screen time a little bit. It always helps me sleep, so with the schedule, I think that's always helpful.”
"I think he's really interesting and a smart person"
Lankinen isn’t the only Canuck cracking open a book, as Quinn Hughes also has a love for the written word. “I can’t say anyone else on the [Canucks] reads like that,” said Hughes to Jackie Redmond this summer, but with Lankinen’s addition to the team, he’s no longer alone.
“Yeah, we had a couple good chats. I think he's really interesting and a smart person,” said Lankinen about Hughes. “I think as we go along here, I'm really curious to pick his brain a little bit.”
While Lankinen and Hughes might be able to bond over books, Lankinen loves to connect with different teammates with different interests.
“As a hockey team, it brings a lot of richness, I think, just to have different personas and different perspectives and values,” he said. “I think it's a really great thing.”
That’s so much of why Lankinen loves to read: embracing different perspectives on life. One of the books he’s recommended in the past is “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara, which is definitely not light reading. Its themes of trauma, sexual abuse, and self-harm are heavy subjects that are not what hockey fans might expect on a hockey player’s bookshelf.
Lankinen, however, says that he likes to be challenged by what he reads to help him improve as a person.
“Probably ‘A Little Life’ isn’t for everybody,” he said. “I think a big part of me is leaning toward self-growth. I read a lot of things on how to improve your mindset and different philosophies, views of life, trying to pick a couple of good things from here and there. I think it’s a great tool to learn not just about subjects out there in the world but to learn about yourself too.”
Lankinen said that his wife is also a big reader — “She probably reads even more than I do” — and that at times they’ll take turns picking books that they can read together.
“We have some great in-depth conversations, and we like to discover the world, discover what's out there, and just try to be good human beings too,” said Lankinen. “Hockey or the result of a game doesn't necessarily define who you are, because you always want to leave a legacy with how you make people feel, and just being a good person.”
Lankinen let me know what’s currently on his nightstand.
“I've been reading a lot of Hermann Hesse lately, he's pretty classic. ‘Siddhartha,’ that was the one I last read,” he said. “And we just went on a little trip and found this book called ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ and I'm looking forward to that.”
"Whenever I'm in nature, I feel like that grounds me and takes me to a happy place"
Of course, Lankinen’s life isn’t all about reading. He is a professional hockey player, after all, which is his main focus in life. Even in the off-season, reading takes a backseat to other hobbies, including sports like tennis, padel, and golf, but he mostly enjoys getting outdoors, which is a big reason why Vancouver was so appealing.
“A lot less reading in the offseason, I’ll tell you that,” said Lankinen. “When you're home, you're spending more time with your family and your friends and just a lot of outdoor stuff. Me and my wife are big outdoor people, so that's why we were really excited to land here. We've already done a few good trips to Squamish and Grouse Mountain and a couple places nearby.”
Lankinen’s off-season was an intense one as he prepared himself for what he hoped would be a big opportunity, so finding ways to relax was even more important than ever.
“We take off to the lake house on the weekends, just sauna every day, swim, spend time in the outdoors, and go pick blueberries and stuff like that,” he added. “Whenever I’m in nature, I feel like that grounds me and takes me to a happy place.”
His routine seemed to pay off. Lankinen is playing some of the best hockey of his career and has firmly seized the net in Vancouver. Even once Demko returns, Lankinen has made a strong argument to get more starts, which can only be beneficial to keeping Demko well-rested throughout the season.
“I've been preparing so well for this opportunity, not just this summer, but the past few years, just to make sure that whenever I get a good opportunity, I've got all the tools, both physically and mentally, to do what it takes,” said Lankinen. “And still, it’s always a work in progress.”
While Lankinen is a 29-year-old veteran, he still feels young in the NHL, as he didn’t play in the league until he was 25.
“I've been in the league for four or five years now, but I still think there's so much I can improve on,” said Lankinen. “Some of the guys who come into the league at 18 or 19 have been around for 10 years, but I feel like I'm just getting started. And there's so many good things that even the new goalie coach, Marco [Torenius], has brought to my game, that I feel I can elevate my game even more.”
Similar to his love for reading, Lankinen’s journey with goaltending also started when he was a kid. Lankinen said that he felt drawn to goaltending right from a young age, whether he was playing street hockey with his friends or ice hockey on a team.
“I always loved the gear, being in front of the puck, and whenever I wasn’t in net, I was playing D and I was still in front of the net blocking all the shots,” said Lankinen with a laugh. “They were getting mad at me: ‘Just strap the pads on and get in the net.’ That was always my calling somehow.”
Right now, Canucks fans are very glad that Lankinen followed that calling.
