Artūrs Šilovs hasn’t had a busier year in his National Hockey League (NHL) career, and the workload could yet increase with the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 on the horizon.
Drafted to the NHL in 2019, the ice hockey goaltender’s career prior to the 2025/26 season had been limited to 19 regular-season and 10 postseason appearances with the Vancouver Canucks.
This season, after being traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the 24-year-old finds himself in rotation with Tristan Jarry as part of the Penguins’ starting goalie tandem — he has already had 13 appearances this year, a career-high in the NHL, with around a third of the season played.
And he’s been named to Latvia’s preliminary roster* for Milano Cortina 2026. He was previously the team’s starting goalie when, against the odds, the 2023 IIHF World Championship co-hosts went on a run to win the bronze medal that year.
“That was huge (for hockey in Latvia),” he reflected to Olympics.com recently when the Penguins played in the NHL Global Series 2025 in Stockholm, Sweden.
“I think winning [against] teams that we haven’t beaten in history was pretty special: beating Czechia in overtime, then beating the Swiss in overtime, and then winning against Sweden [in the] quarters.
“A lot of huge games, a lot of resilient games. Even [though] we got out-shot in most of the games… we were still managing to score like three goals, four goals. A huge trend was for us that tournament managing to capitalise on the opportunities we had and just being resilient.”
Now, the next chance for Latvian ice hockey to take centre stage is here. With NHL players back at the Olympic Winter Games, Šilovs and his national teammates will have a chance to shine on the biggest platform.
“You take one game at a time,” Šilovs said of Latvia’s group, which includes Denmark, Germany, and world champions USA. “You just have to out-battle and win those 50-50 battles. There’s a lot of big nations there and they have a lot of skill but if we out-battle them I think there’s a chance.
“There’s going to be the best players in the world and you want to showcase your nation that we can battle for something here, play with pride and fearlessness and that’s about it.”