The Edmonton Oilers are coming home with a road split against the Vancouver Canucks, first blowing a 4–1 lead in Game 1 before winning 4–3 in overtime in Game 2. The Canucks’ Vezina nominee Thatcher Demko is sidelined with a knee injury after coming coming back from a similar injury late in the regular season. This has resulted in Rick Tocchet and Ian Clark going with Arturs Silovs, a young Latvian netminder who spent most of the season in the AHL with Abbotsford.
Coming into the playoffs, Silovs had played a total of nine career NHL regular season games. In 2022–23, he put up a .908 SV% over five games while he had an .881 in four games during this year’s regular season. A bright spot in Silovs’ career was when he went 7–3–0 with a .921 SV% at last year’s World Championship, ultimately capturing a bronze medal on home soil over Canucks’ backup Casey DeSmith.
After Demko was injured in Game 1 against the Nashville Predators and DeSmith was injured in Game 2, Silovs took over in Game 3 and has not relinquished the net since. With the Oilers playing a relatively unproven commodity, what are Silovs’ weaknesses and how should they attack him?
Silovs tends to overslide
Particularly in the Edmonton series, Silovs has been playing an active game. He’s a big frame at 6’4″, but skates relatively well for his size. Unlike the Predators, the Oilers have the ability to open up the Canucks defensive shell throughout a game, which has Silovs using many slides to get around the crease. The first two saves shown in the highlight of the Leon Draisaitl goal are prime examples.
However, this has got him into trouble in two specific fashions this year. The first comes with traffic, where Silovs guesses where the shot is going and slides towards that. This doesn’t only happen in traffic, as he’s made this mistake a few times on open shots as well. Goals from Mattias Ekholm, Cody Ceci and Zach Hyman in Game 1 were prime examples, while the Ekholm and Evan Bouchard goals in Game 2 also show his tendency to chase the play on his knees.
Inactive gloves
The Oilers aren’t a great finishing team based on the season so far, but both Edmonton and Nashville have been able to pick some corners on Silovs. This is particularly showing up in traffic, where Silovs defaults into a compact block, and off of pre shot puck movement, where Silovs tucks his gloves into his sides rather than leading with them.
Along with collapsing into his body, Silovs has been susceptible to pulling his hands backwards towards the net, then having to chase over his pads. This action not only opens more space for a shot, but makes any reaction twice as hard from the extra distance needed to cover to the shot path with the gloves retracted.
The result is that Silovs covers the middle of the net very well, and is unlikely to get beaten through his body even if he doesn’t see it. It does however, leave the corners of the net open, particularly just over the pad on both the blocker and glove sides. The Draisaitl, Ekholm and McDavid goals in Game 2 show what’s happening here, along with multiple goals in the Nashville series.
Breaking down Silovs shot by shot
Like any goalie, getting traffic and puck movement when attacking Silovs is going to lead to better results. Within that, there are a couple specific areas to key in on. Silovs often slides to where he thinks the puck is going, whether it be through traffic or on open shots.
Going against the grain can exploit this, whether it be disguising releases, some faked shots to get him to bite, or shooting where the existing sightline is to get Silovs to lose himself in traffic. Additionally, the Oilers, who didn’t have great finishing metrics this year, will need to make sure they can pick corners on the Latvian netminder, as his gloves aren’t super active in general.
