VANCOUVER — For the second straight spring, goalie Arturs Silovs is near the top of the mountain in the playoffs. But he travelled an awfully deep valley between the two peaks.
The 24-year-old Latvian, an unlikely hero in the Vancouver Canucks’ playoff run a year ago, has taken the organization’s minor-league team to the Calder Cup Finals, which start Friday night when the Abbotsford Canucks visit the Charlotte Checkers in North Carolina.
Silovs has been the American Hockey League team’s playoff MVP, playing all 18 post-season games with a .929 save rate and shutouts in five of his 12 Calder Cup wins.
He is a rock star in Abbotsford, the team’s most popular player.
Silovs has earned the love after a disastrous start to his season, which saw him fumble away the interim starting job with the NHL Canucks and play his way back to the AHL team last fall.
“Hockey is, like, a game of inches, right?” Silovs said after arriving in Charlotte to face the Florida Panthers’ farm team. “Anything can happen. If you’re late a little bit somewhere, maybe deep in the crease, you know, you get punished for it. It’s like a never-ending battle for a goalie. It’s always a process-based game. It’s adjusting.”
The goaltender adjusted in the AHL after winning just two of his nine NHL starts this season — both against the desultory Chicago Blackhawks — while generating an .861 save rate that ranked 72nd among 73 goalies who played at least 10 NHL games.
The Canucks’ minor-league staff, led by head coach Manny Malhotra and including goalie coach Justin Pogge, helped put Silovs’ game back together.
“I would say, there was some ups and downs… coming back here and gathering himself a little bit,” Ryan Johnson, the Canucks’ AHL general manager, said. “I think Pogge’s has done a great job with him. Arty is an emotional player, (but) when he plays with too much emotion, his game usually falls off. Teams we’re playing are trying to get him emotionally engaged. A huge part of his play has been just managing himself and his emotions. You’ll see him a lot (after whistles), just drop the puck, skate to the corner, drop the puck, skate to the corner. It has balanced his game and brought him consistency.
“He’s another guy that I think could have (said), “Hey, I’ve been in the NHL, I’ve played in the playoffs, I can go home and come back next year and look what I’ve accomplished.’ He has decided that this is important to him.”
In the NHL, Silovs had trouble seeing and tracking pucks through screens. In the AHL, he’s been able to be more aggressive, playing slightly farther out of his net and using his length and athleticism to recover when needed.
The goalie burst to prominence as a prospect two years ago when he led Latvia to a historic bronze medal at the 2023 world championship. His performance through two rounds of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last year, displacing NHL veteran Casey DeSmith as starter after Thatcher Demko was injured, earned him a spot in Vancouver last fall. It also created heavy expectations that eventually crushed him.
Silovs was a sixth-round draft pick in 2019 and three years ago was still splitting time between the AHL and ECHL.
“Less practice was a challenge,” Silovs said, reflecting on what went wrong for him at the NHL level this season. “Less reps. It was something new for me. I like to practise, I like to work on my game all the time. I feel like I’m finding, like, a different way to be consistent, being able to still be sharp with less reps. I think it’s a mental state, as well. A lot of travelling (in the NHL), a different environment. I think it’s just, like, a part of experience. My first season, right? Learning from it, I think it gave me a push.”
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Silovs has proved the last three months that he is capable of superior play, and should still be regarded as an NHL prospect. But his window with the Canucks may be closing, since Kevin Lankinen’s season in Vancouver was rewarded with a long-term contract and the organization’s plan, subject to change, is to go with Demko and Lankinen next year.
Since Silovs will be waiver-eligible next season, the Canucks may not be able to keep developing him at the AHL level.
“Honestly, I don’t really think about it, like, what’s going to happen,” Silovs said. “I don’t really think too hard about it. Like, everyone here is working hard. I just only focus on the games. You know, do the best in the playoffs, have a summer, and then just go from there.
“I mean, it’s great just being part of the team. I think chemistry is really good in the room, and I think that’s what helps us in tough moments to fight for each other. It’s great being around these guys.”
Johnson said no one should view Silovs’ season — starting in the NHL and finishing in the AHL — as a failure.
“You look at goaltenders (and) often their journey to their peak is a lot of ups and downs — and time,” he said. “There’s very few goalies that just hit the ground running. Arty is still very much a young man in his development path. People watch the world championships, Stanley Cup Playoffs and it’s easy to put this big (expectation) on him. But I think, even from this year, what he’s learned has only propelled him forward, which is exciting for us.”
Game 2 of the Calder Cup Finals is Sunday in Charlotte, before the best-of-seven series shifts to Abbotsford for up to three games, starting Tuesday. The Canucks’ farm team has never won an AHL championship.
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