Canucks prospect Arturs Silovs named 2023 World Championship MVP

Arturs Silovs is bringing home some hardware from this year’s IIHF World Championship tournament.

On top of the bronze medal he earned early Sunday morning with Latvia’s comeback win — the nation’s first time ever earning a medal at the World Championship — the 22-year-old prospect goaltender picked up tournament MVP honours following the gold medal game between Canada and Germany.

After starting the tournament in relief duty (it took about five minutes into Latvia’s first game vs. Canada to switch goaltenders and never look back), Silovs was absolutely brilliant in goal and started every one of Latvia’s remaining games in the tournament.

Silovs endeared himself to Canucks fans this past season when he made five starts at the NHL level, looking better with each game he played. The tournament doesn’t change much obviously, but it does solidify what we already knew about Silovs — he’s a legit prospect worth keeping a close eye on.

Silovs finished the tournament with a 7-2-0 record and a .923 save percentage, and was the definition of a rock in goal for Latvia. Give his teammates credit, they never took a shift off and found ways to win despite being a worse team on paper than many of the teams they beat. Obviously, Silovs was a huge part of that, but the Latvian defence did a relatively good job of keeping their opposition’s chances to the outside almost all tournament long.

After Silovs sent Conor Garland’s USA squad home empty-handed in the bronze medal game, Ethan Bear and Tyler Myers secured the gold medal with Canada following the team’s 5-2 win over Germany later in the day.

Here is a highlight reel of Silovs’ tournament that the IIHF has put together.