Pittsburgh Penguins' goaltender Artūrs Šilovs posted a 26-save effort to help Latvia beat Leon Draisaitl and Team Germany in an Olympic preliminary round matchup
Pittsburgh Penguins' goaltender Artūrs Šilovs has a pretty good international track record when suiting up for Team Latvia.
And he continued to build his international resume on Saturday.
In Latvia's second game of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milano-Cortina, Šilovs helped his team earn a 4-3 win over Edmonton Oilers' superstar Leon Draisaitl and team Germany. The 24-year-old netminder stopped 26 of 28 German shots on the way to Latvia's first win of preliminary round play.
It is the second consecutive appearance for Šilovs, who entered the game in the third period in Latvia's 5-1 loss to Team Canada on Thursday and stopped five of six shots.
The scoring kicked off a little more than two minutes into the game, when Team Germany's Lukas Reichel scored on a feed by ex-Penguin Dominik Kahun to make it 1-0. Latvia's Dans Locmelis tied the game later in the first on the power play, and Germany responded a little more than a minute later on a goal by Lukas Kalble.
The score remained that way until late in the second period, when Locmelis scored his second goal of the game to tie things up at 2-2. Then, midway through the third period, Latvia scored two goals in three minutes and five seconds courtesy of Eduards Tralmaks and Renars Krastenbergs to go up by two.
Draisaitl and J.J. Peterka did feed Tim Stutzle to bring Germany to within one with a little more than two minutes remaining, but Šilovs and the Latvians were able to hold off a late push by Germany to walk away with the 4-3 win.
Latvia, currently sitting at 1-1, concludes preliminary round play with a matchup against Denmark - who lost 6-3 to Team USA Saturday - at 1:10 p.m. ET Sunday. Latvia currently sits in second behind Team USA in Group C, and the top-two teams in each grouping are guaranteed to advance to the qualifying rounds.
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