Canucks vs. Oilers: Arturs Silovs Vancouver’s newest goalie legend

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Fans of the Vancouver Canucks have long loved their underdogs.

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Perhaps it’s because cheering on the team itself has almost always felt like an underdog experience. How else to explain persevering through five decades of championship-free, never-quite-there misery?

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You must find the little things to enjoy.

Like third-string goaltenders posting shutouts in series-clinching games on the road.

Even with the game thousands of kilometres away, Canucks fans who were walking out of Rogers Arena following the Game 6 viewing party were chanting “Silovs! Silovs!” in the streets for goalie Arturs Silovs.

With a glove like that, you know you should be glad.

Canucks fans have always taken a liking to backup goalies — think Eddie Lack, Cory Schneider and Bob Essensa — as well as the true underdogs, like Jeff Cowan, Rory Fitzpatrick. Whatever else happens in his career, Silovs is now in this pile of fan fun.

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With Silovs now certain to start Game 1 Tuesday versus the Edmonton Oilers, they’ll have a little bit of time to practise taking those chants to the next level: follow the lead of Latvian fans last year, I say.

After Silovs played a starring role for his homeland at the World Championships at home in Riga, leading them to a third-place finish, Latvia’s best-ever placing at the Worlds, fans took inspiration from the Beatles’s classic hit She Loves You.

Silovs in Latvian is correctly pronounced almost exactly as “she loves” in English, so Latvian fans simply sang “Silovs you, yeah, yeah yeah.”

What an opening that would be to the series, having fans serenading their newest underdog hero.

And in the series to come, the Canucks are going to need Silovs at his absolute best.

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Thatcher Demko is back on the ice, but his return isn’t imminent. All the timelines being whispered behind the scenes about a possible return for Demko have said a return late in the series, not early.

So Silovs will be the man for a little while yet.

“I just wanted to embrace the challenge and I’ve played on big stages before and was already familiar with what could happen,” Silovs said after Friday’s win.

He’s as calm as it gets, even in victory.

But you know he quietly relishes it all.

“Every game for a goalie is outperforming the other guy and winning the battle,” he added.

The Canucks defeated the Predators because they were strong on defence, especially on the penalty kill. They killed off 19 of 21 Nashville power plays, a remarkable statistic.

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One of the two goals, remember, was Silovs knocking the puck into his own net after a mad goalmouth smash up. So really, only one shot beat him clean.

But in the series to come, the PK is going to be under as much pressure as you can get.

The Oilers have the NHL’s best power play.

They demolished the Los Angeles Kings in the first round in large part due to their power play, scoring on 45 per cent of their opportunities, a total of seven goals. (In total, they outscored L.A. at all strengths by nine goals on the series.)

Edmonton, by the way, also killed off all of L.A.’s power plays, a massive special teams swing.

It’s no surprise to hear head coach Rick Tocchet say that his team knows they can’t get into a “penalty-fest” against the Oilers. Giving a power play that features Conor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl more chances than they’ll already create on their own is a bad idea.

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The Canucks have taken a defence-first approach to the game over the second half. They gave Nashville next to nothing.

And sure, they swept the Oilers during the regular season, but three of those wins were early in the year, when the Oilers were reeling and hadn’t begun the amazing surge that saw them nearly beat the Canucks for the division title.

The Canucks may have won the division in the end, but, like their goalie, they go into this series as plucky underdogs.

“We are who we are,” Tocchet said after Friday’s win. “But we hang in. The way we play defence keeps us in. I’m proud of the way guys bought in. We had jitters and hopefully winning this series will loosen some people up, but it’s going to get harder.”

Fans will be hoping they’ll be singing for Silovs again, and again, and again.

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Read more of our Canucks playoff coverage:

•‘That was wild’: Fans bring the party to watch as Canucks win Round 1
• Canucks vs. Oilers series expected to start Tuesday
• Stanley Cup Coffee: Canucks vs. Oilers Tyler Myers’ full-body block is the stuff of legends as they move on
• Canucks: Elias Pettersson recognized for ability, sportsmanship with Lady Byng Trophy nomination
• Stanley Cup Coffee: Canucks vs. Oilers Tyler Myers’ full-body block is the stuff of legends as they move on

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