Meet Arturs Silovs, the Canucks’ International Man of Mystery
Arturs Silovs Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports
Vancouver Canucks fans may be on pins and needles as their team navigates a maze of untimely goalie injuries. But with just nine games of NHL experience under his belt, Arturs Silovs was unfazed when he learned that he was getting the start for Game 4 in Nashville on Sunday.
“It’s great,” he smiled after the Canucks’ 4-3 comeback victory. “Time to shine, you know?”
At 23, Silovs is five years younger than Canucks starter Thatcher Demko. Backup Casey DeSmith, 32, is nine-and-a-half years his senior.
But in a head-to-head clash with DeSmith in Finland last May, Silovs earned the bragging rights and became a hero in his home nation when he backstopped Latvia to a 4-3 overtime win over Team USA in the bronze-medal game at the 2023 World Championship.
It was the first World Championship medal in history for the nation of 1.8 million people — Latvia has about the same population as the Nashville metropolitan area. But they’re hockey-mad, known for travelling well to support their squad every year at Worlds, decked out in team garb while banging on drums, blowing horns, chanting and cheering starting hours before puck drop and continuing through to the final horn.
Growing up in Latvia’s capital, Silovs has experienced that fandom as a home-ice advantage, both during league games and at the 2023 Worlds. And after Riga missed out on that top-shelf fan experience due to social distancing restrictions for the 2021 World Championship, the city was invited to co-present with Tampere, Finland, two years later.
The Latvian team played its round-robin games in Riga, then got its chance to play for a medal thanks to a 3-1 quarterfinal win over Sweden, with Silovs making 40 saves.
With that memory stored away in his toolbox, Silovs didn’t feel the slightest bit rattled by the rowdy Predators fans at Bridgestone Arena.
“It feels great,” he said. “Either they boo you, or they’re for you. It’s always great to play.”
Silovs’ showing at Worlds meant so much to the Latvians that a national holiday was declared in the team’s honor. A likeness has also been erected to commemorate his MVP achievement and his part in Latvia’s first-ever finish above seventh place in the tournament.
Silovs finished strong, but he wasn’t selected as Latvia’s Game 1 starter. It took less than five minutes — and two goals on five shots by Team Canada against Ivars Punnenovs — for coach Harijs Vitolins to make the switch, then run with Silovs the rest of the way.
He went through an even more dramatic cycle at the 2022 event. Elvis Merzlikins went 1-2-0 in the first three games, then was pulled one period into Game 4. After his relief appearance, Silovs delivered a 4-3 shootout win over Austria, came in to relieve Merzlikins again against Great Britain, then finished off with a 34-save outing in a 1-0 loss to Sweden. Latvia failed to advance to the medal round, but Silovs’ final stat line was a 1.22 goals-against average and .952 save percentage in four appearances.
With history like that, expect him to be completely comfortable with whatever twists and turns lie ahead in net for Vancouver.
Though he had good size at 6-foot-4 and 203 pounds in his draft year, Silovs flew under the radar by playing in his home country and wasn’t even ranked by NHL Central Scouting. His stock began to rise after a strong showing at the 2019 Under-18 championship in Sweden, where he had the tournament’s fifth-best save percentage of .918 and a 24-save shutout against Slovakia.
After signing on with agent Paul Theofanous, they decided together that Silovs would make the trip to Vancouver to attend the draft.
As Day 2 went on, “I was getting a little bit nervous,” Silovs conceded at his first Canucks training camp in the fall of 2019. “You just flew from Europe — it’s a long flight and you’re thinking, if you’re not getting drafted, you just fly home and that’s all.”
It all worked out. The draft hosts called his name at No. 156, and he was signed to his entry-level contract by August — an early vote of organizational confidence for a late-round pick.
In his draft-plus-one year, Silovs caught on with the Barrie Colts, where he played 36 games. But like many players his age, especially goalies, pandemic shutdowns wreaked havoc on his development. Over the next two seasons, he spent time back in Latvia and bounced around the AHL and the ECHL, never getting much game action.
At the 2022 Worlds, he started to show what he could do. And for the last two years, he has seen plenty of action as half of a tandem with the AHL Abbotsford Canucks, and logged a respectable 6-2-1 record when he has been called upon at the NHL level.
With Thatcher Demko currently listed as week-to-week and DeSmith’s condition described by Tocchet as changing by the hour, it wasn’t clear on Monday who would man the Canucks’ crease as they try to close out their series against the Predators in Game 5 at Rogers Arena.
It’s a testament to goaltending coach Ian Clark that the team has already received wins from all three stoppers who have been pressed into duty — something that hasn’t happened since Dan Cloutier, Johan Hedberg and Alex Auld did the same thing for the Canucks 20 years ago against the Calgary Flames — a first-round series that ultimately ended in a seven-game loss.
The way things are going, no one would be surprised if Silovs’ Game 4 backup, Nikita Tolopilo, was pressed into duty.
But while Tocchet embraces the ‘next man up’ mentality, even he has his limits.
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