Everything is falling into place for goaltender Arturs Silovs: CanucksArmy prospect rankings #3

Arturs Silovs came into the 2022-23 season as a 21-year-old with just 11 AHL games under his belt.

Since then, he has evolved into a trusted AHL starter and still has so much room to grow as a goaltender.

Let’s dive into the first prospect in our top three — Arturs Silovs.

Arturs Silovs is a 6’3″ goaltender who was selected in the sixth round of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. The Canucks saw a lot of raw potential in the Latvian’s game and his work under the tutelage of Ian Clark is starting to show on the ice in game action.

Silovs has a 19-9-4 record this season with the Abbotsford Canucks in the AHL. He has a .901% save percentage and a goals against average of 2.60. Silovs’ 19 wins put him second in the AHL and two of those wins came via shutouts.

Though his .901% save percentage is not incredible to look at, the way he is getting to that number sure is. Silovs is an acrobatic goaltender who drips athleticism and showcases his flexibility on a nightly basis.

There have been massive steps in Silovs’ game with how he covers the net. His stance is tighter and the movement in the crease with his short pushes make him look like a much more technically sound goaltender than when we first saw him at Canucks training camp over in Victoria during the 2019-20 season.

As we see with a lot of Ian Clark’s goalies, Silovs is aggressive when challenging shooters and makes himself as big as possible when veering out of the crease to take away angles.

The size is not teachable, and when Silovs puts it together with his pure athleticism, he is the perfect candidate to potentially take over as the Canucks’ starter one day. He even garnered some attention for his strong preseason play.

We do see some parts of his game that need improvement but the good news is that he is still just 21 years old. I’m far from a goalie expert but I’m going to try and give my takeaways from watching almost all of his starts in the AHL.

First off, it seems like Silovs gets beat under the arms a little too often. He kind of reminds me of the early parts of Jacob Markstrom’s Canucks career — where Markstrom looked so big but had pucks just slip through him early in games. A decent amount of the goals that Silovs gives up are clean shots that slip through him and though they aren’t great for him during those games, we actually look at it as positive because Silovs has a lot of similarities to Markstrom. Once Markstrom was able to tighten up his game a bit, he became a top-tier goaltender.

The hope is that Silovs can work on his weaknesses while continuing to upgrade the parts of his game that are already impressive. If he is able to do all that and continue to learn from one of the best goalie coaches in the world — we may have a potential starter in Silovs.

Due to the injury to Thatcher Demko, which resulted in the call-up of Collin Delia, Silovs has been trusted into the starter’s role in the AHL this season. He’s run with the opportunity and has shown that he can handle the workload. From our viewpoint in the preseason, we wanted to see Silovs fight for the chance to be Abbotsford’s starter for the AHL playoffs. We are now at a point where Silovs has earned the coach’s trust and he should get the chance to be a goalie who gets somewhere near 40 starts this season and perhaps close in on 45-55 next season.

If this road of development continues, we can see Silovs coming to the NHL for the 2024-25 season as a hot-shot 23-year-old goalie with a lot of AHL experience under his belt and the confidence to try and prove himself at the NHL level. There’s no rush for goaltenders, but maybe we see Silovs late into next season in a similar way to how Thatcher Demko broke into the NHL as a 23-year-old in January of 2019. For the record, Silovs would be 22 if he took an NHL spot next January.

No matter the case, Silovs is rolling this season in the AHL and continuing to improve on his weaknesses as he gains experience in the closest league to the NHL. It’s been a great year for Silovs and that’s why he has moved up from number 10 (post-draft ranking) to number three on our rankings.

This concludes our third-ranked prospect report. We will be back tomorrow as we look at who comes in at number two on our rankings.

Honourable Mentions: Aku Koskenvuo, Joni Jurmo, Connor Lockhart, and Kirill Kudryavtsev.