Monday Mailbag: Let’s see Silovs in the NHL next season, sneaky-good prospects in the 2023 draft, and more

We’ve all latched on to Arturs Silovs’ success at the IIHF World Championship over the past few weeks. Silovs was named MVP of the tournament on Sunday and it was a nice cherry on top of what was already an incredible story for the 22-year-old goaltender.

Silovs’ end to the AHL year was an interesting one. Spencer Martin played in Abbotsford’s final two playoff games, leaving Silovs watching from the bench. He didn’t sulk. Instead, Silovs continued to work and prepared himself to represent his home country of Latvia on home soil at the World Championship. Then, just like the final two games of the AHL playoffs, Silovs began the World Championship on the bench. He took over just five minutes into the tournament and after a couple of tough losses, he banged off six straight wins, including a tremendous 40-save performance against Sweden to get to the medal round.

Through the six consecutive wins, Silovs posted a .939% save percentage and showed his best as the world watched.

It brings up the question, should Arturs Silovs be Thatcher Demko’s backup next season?

This question was certainly on the mind of some Canucks fans as we rolled through offseason thoughts but his performance at Worlds certainly makes you more excited about the chance that he is the NHL backup next season and at 22 years old, that’s pretty damn young and exciting as well.

A lot of people believe that Silovs should be the guy down in Abbotsford and that you can find him NHL starts throughout the season with him just being down the road in Abbotsford.

That may be the case but why not just make him the backup next season?

One thing we know about Silovs is that goaltending coach Ian Clark absolutely loves him. We can all agree that Silovs is still developing his game and that a ton of starts in the AHL would be helpful for his development. But what may be even better for his development is getting the chance to have basically a start a week and then practice time five times a week with the best goaltending coach in the world.

I don’t think there’s anything bad about AHL goaltending coach Marko Torenius. He is a Clark guy, and the two work extremely well together from all the information we gathered this past season. In terms of improving as a goaltender, there may not be a better road than working directly with Ian Clark.

Silovs needs to find a bit more consistency before he’s a true NHL goaltender and getting the chance to face NHL shots in practice while working hand-in-hand with Thatcher Demko and Ian Clark feels like the right spot for him right now. Silovs is absolutely in the conversation to be the present-day second-best goalie in the Canucks’ organization and looking at next season as the time to make the NHL jump may feel a bit early, but Silovs just had a year that is absolutely deserving of the promotion.

If Spencer Martin or newcomer Nikita Tolopilo wins the backup job because they look that much better in training camp and preseason — then they deserve the job. We just don’t see Silovs taking a step back over the next few months.

More starts (in the AHL) are certainly a good thing, but our belief is that with 55 AHL starts under his belt, five NHL games, and two years as Latvia’s goalie at the Worlds, he’s ready to take on 15-20 starts in the NHL next season.

It doesn’t feel rushed but you can certainly disagree in the comments section.

Now that we got the big and only news story out of the way, let’s dive into the mailbag and see what the wonderful people of #CanucksTwitter had to ask this week.

No more wasted words, let’s go!

I’ve heard some things from being around the rink. I don’t know right now if the Canucks will have a new jumbotron next season, but they certainly have been looking.

Late in the season, they did go over to Europe to look at a new jumbotron, but the deal never went through as the jumbotron wasn’t up to their standard.

For those who don’t know. An arena jumbotron can range from $2,000,000 to close to $15,000,000. Back in 2019, the United Centre in Chicago got themselves a gorgeous, brand-new scoreboard that cost them a smooth $14,500,000.

We don’t believe the Canucks will be spending $15,000,000 on their scoreboard. We expect it to be closer to $2,000,000 than $15,000,000 but I’d love to be surprised and see the Canucks blow it up with a wicked new scoreboard.

The Canucks’ current jumbotron is showing its age. We saw screens consistently die throughout the later parts of the season and it’s just an older scoreboard when you look at the evolution of arenas around the league. The Canucks do put on one of the better in-game experiences with their fun games between the whistle and live DJ with DJ Tom Fleming ripping it up on the ones and twos.

We will get it up on SoundCloud soon.

For now, you can watch this video of him rating it out of 10.

The changes at the helm will certainly help grease some trades this offseason and with the reported 2-4 million dollar rise in the cap coming, we may see some teams look at free agency and then think they can get better value in a trade with the Canucks for Brock Boeser or Conor Garland.

I expect this offseason to have some big trades as we’ve seen how well that has worked for the Florida Panthers. Teams like the Carolina Hurricanes, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers and more teams will likely be some teams who are looking for the big move to get them to the next step of being cup contenders.

New general managers will certainly be interesting to watch here over the next couple of months.

I’m not sure who they will be targeting but if I had to guess, I’d say that Axel Landén out of Sweden has to be on their list.

We will be spending some time on more right-shot defencemen over the next few weeks here. Keep an eye out for the articles here at CanucksArmy.

https://twitter.com/nucks1212/status/1662895469075501056?s=20

There’s a 90% chance that who they pick at 11 immediately becomes their number one prospect.

I’m here for it and Ian Clark really likes Silovs.

If you can get the same type of value in a trade return as in the recent past, I’d make the move because as you mentioned, this is a deep draft in terms of high-end talent. The mix between 10-25 isn’t that different. There’s a lot of potential there.

They honestly should. That bronze medal is probably the biggest moment in Latvian hockey history. Your question may be a little bit tongue in cheek, it’s hard to read through Twitter. But they honestly should make a bronze statue of Arturs Silovs and put it outside of the rink in Riga, Latvia.

David Reinbacher is ranked outside of the top-15 in a lot of notable outlets’ rankings. I believe he’s the best defenceman in the draft and should absolutely be a top-10 pick.

Another name to watch is Lenni Hāmeenaho out of Finland. He put up 12 goals in 59 Liiga games (season and playoffs) but still has not been able to find himself in everyone’s top 50 lists.

If they can get some breaks, they have a chance to make the playoffs. Health is the key here.

Yes, he will. Rick Tocchet saw him play some good games in the AHL playoffs, he took note.

I’d do this every damn day and twice on Sunday’s.

That wraps up another Monday Mailbag here at CanucksArmy.

Thanks to everyone for sending in questions this week and we will be back next week for another Monday Mailbag.