PITTSBURGH – The Arty Party was so long ago now it’s hard to remember how much fun it was.
It was the unexpected, almost unimaginable, playoff run for Arturs Silovs after the 23-year-old goalie parachuted into the Stanley Cup tournament from the minors when Vancouver Canucks starter Thatcher Demko was injured in Game 1 last April.
Silovs was too young to know what he didn’t know and just rolled with the experience. There was his famous pink paisley shirt — suitable for a Latvian nightclub, ex-teammate Nikita Zadorov said — that was taken hostage by J.T. Miller in practice. There were the ice packs on Silovs’ head, his happy-go-lucky amiability, and clutch goaltending that included a 1-0 shutout on the road to clinch the first-round series against the Nashville Predators.
All this already felt forever ago before Silovs, struggling since this season began, surrendered four goals on the first 10 shots Wednesday against the poor Pittsburgh Penguins and allowed five goals in 24 minutes before the Canucks rallied in a 5-4 National Hockey League loss.
Everyone left the party a while ago, and you have to wonder how many more chances the Canucks can afford to give Silovs even if Demko, tormented by that popliteus muscle in his knee, isn’t back soon.
“Yeah, he’s struggling,” Canucks coach Rick Tocchet said of Silovs. “You know, he’s got to battle. He’s got to get bigger in the net and battle. It’s the NHL. It is what it is. (He has) got to work tomorrow and get his game.
“It’s the goalmouth stuff that seems to be going in all year. I think he’s just got to be a little bit bigger in the net. I guess when you don’t have confidence, you sink in your net. So, you know, he’s got a battle. It’s like everybody. When you’re struggling, you’ve got to battle through it.”
Silovs was supposed to be the fill-in starter during Demko’s absence but decidedly lost that job to Kevin Lankinen one week into the regular season.
Signed as a free agent during training camp, Lankinen provided the Canucks’ their best goaltending performance of the season in Tuesday’s 2-0 road win in Boston. And 24 hours later, Silovs turned in one of the worst.
With five goals on 23 shots, Silovs’ ghastly save percentage further dipped to .847, which does not keep anyone employed in the NHL, and his record is now 1-4-1 in six starts. Lankinen is 10-3-2 with a .909 save rate.
“You wait for your opportunity, and then it’s, like, 4-1 in the first period,” Silovs told Sportsnet after the game. “So it’s hard. But I’m just trying to push through, trying to shut it down as much as I can.”
Allowing the first shot to beat him on Wednesday, Silovs admitted it is a challenge to stay positive.
“It is hard,” he said. “You know, it’s like, I have 10 shots and four goals. I think any goalie would think something’s wrong, something’s not going the way you want it. You just have to stick to the next shot.”
Now, to be clear, the Canucks were pretty awful defensively on a couple of goals that beat him.
On Rickard Rakell’s net-front chip that made it 2-1, Canuck defenceman Carson Soucy tracked his check and no one rotated in behind him. And on Bryan Rust’s two-on-one goal that made it 4-1 when defenceman Tyler Myers drifted farther right than the U.S. Supreme Court and the middle of the ice was wide open.
But Silovs lost his edge and had a poor push on the fourth goal, overcommitted on an initial, errant shot that gave Blake Lizotte room to make it 1-0 on an end-boards rebound just 3:59 into the game, and paddled Evgeni Malkin’s soft, centring pass back on to the stick of Kevin Hayes to make it 3-1 at 15:14. Rust’s goal came 2 ½ minutes later.
“The chances we gave up were just too Grade-A,” Soucy said. “We can’t put that on Arty. We need to come out and be ready to take away the high-danger scoring areas better, especially on back-to-back (games).
“I think he knows that we take most of the blame. Any goaltender in this league, anyone has to play with confidence. But especially a young goalie, he needs to play with confidence. With how good he did last year, you’re going to go through ups and downs. Every player in this league is going to go through ups and downs. Ultimately, we’ve got to be better in front of him. It starts with us.”
There’s a lot of truth in that. But it is also inarguable that goalies are paid to stop shots, regardless of how those shots originate.
As Silovs said: “I mean, it doesn’t matter how we play. I always need to make like, that, one key save. Maybe give the guys a breather. If I make one big save when it’s 3-1, maybe it’s a different game.”
Instead, Rust scored on the two-on-one late in the first and then beat Silovs again with a world-class snipe at 3:40 of the second period to put the Penguins up 5-1. As poor as Pittsburgh has been this season – last in the NHL in goals against – it is difficult to blow a four-goal lead in the NHL.
They nearly did, however, as Canuck Pius Suter came off the bench and fired a laser past Dakota Joshua’s screen to make it 5-2 at 13:40 of the middle period, and Quinn Hughes scored on a beautiful 150-foot rush 40 seconds into the final period. Elias Pettersson’s rebound goal made it 5-4 with 1:46 remaining.
“I liked the battle back from us,” Pettersson said, “but we can’t come up with an effort like that to start and expect to win the game. We’ve got to be better, and especially start on time. We don’t give Arty any help back there.”
ICE CHIPS – Canuck defenceman Filip Hronek, whose partnership with Hughes was again close to dominant, left the ice and went straight to the dressing room in the final minute. He appeared to be favouring his arm or shoulder after taking a hit on the end boards as the Canucks attacked six-against-five. Any significant injury to Hronek could prove far more costly than Wednesday’s game. . . The Canucks are carrying an extra defenceman in Vincent Desharnais as they open the second half of their six-game road trip Friday in Buffalo.
