4 things you need to know as all four Canucks at Worlds advance to quarterfinals

For the past two weeks, eight nations have gathered in Tampere, Finland, while another eight have been in Riga, Latvia. Their goal is the same — take home IIHF World Championship gold. And for the eight countries that remain, that dream is still alive.

Ethan Bear, Tyler Myers, Conor Garland, and Arturs Silovs are the four Vancouver Canucks representing their countries at this year’s tournament. All four players’ teams have made it to the quarterfinal round, and all four of those games will take place on Wednesday.

Here are four things you need to know before those games.

First and foremost, you need to know who each Canucks player will be matching up against in the quarterfinal round!

Conor Garland’s USA squad will take on Czechia at 6:20 AM. Out of their seven preliminary round games, USA won six games and one in regulation, giving them the best record in Group A and the right to play fourth-seeded Czechia from Group B.

Tyler Myers and Ethan Bear are both expected to be in the lineup for Canada’s game against hosts Finland at 10:20 AM. Canada gets a bit of a tougher opponent due to the fact that they finished second in group B, with Switzerland losing just one time in overtime to Arturs Silovs’ Team Latvia during their preliminary games.

Speaking of Silovs — don’t worry, this won’t be the last time — he will face one of his toughest tests of the tournament when Latvia takes on second-seeded Sweden at 10:20 AM.

Switzerland and Germany will play the final quarterfinal game.

We just couldn’t wait to talk more about Arturs Silovs.

Remarkable, sensational, phenomenal, incredible — whatever word we use, you get the idea. Arturs Silovs has been a rock in the Latvian goal crease right from when he entered the team’s first preliminary-round game against Canada in relief duty. Silovs is rocking a .927 save percentage in the six games he’s started at this tournament since.

There have been some absolutely brilliant saves from Silovs during this tournament, and he’s saved Latvia’s bacon on more than one occasion so far.

From a Canucks — and Latvian — perspective, he’s undoubtedly been the story of the tournament, and is putting on a show right now that nobody except maybe Swedish people wants to see end.

With two goals and five assists, Conor Garland is tied for 16th in tournament scoring so far. He’s got the fourth-most points of anyone on Team USA, and tallied three of his five assists in a 9-0 demolishing of France.

Garland has logged a ton of ice time and has been trusted to play in all situations for a USA squad that has plenty of young talent on it. At 27, Garland isn’t a “veteran” by any means, but he’s led by example as the player with the third-most NHL games played behind only Nick Bonino and Alex Tuch.

Tyler Myers has played more minutes than Ethan Bear at this tournament, but despite Canada having scored 25 goals through seven preliminary round games, Myers and Bear both remain pointless.

That being said, both have played some big minutes and have been relatively good defensively. Relatively.