Sincerely

Next week, the Latvian hockey team will officially start preparing for the Olympic qualification tournament, which will be held in Riga at the end of August, but some candidates of the national team are already training under the leadership of the main coach Harijs Vītoliņš.

From Monday, those hockey players who have contracts with North American clubs and are in Latvia will go to the ice together. Among them are this year’s Stanley Cup winner Uvis Balinskis, goalkeeper Artur Šilovs, who signed a contract with the Vancouver club for two seasons, as well as forward Rodrigo Abols, who will go to another NHL club, the Philadelphia Flyers, in the fall. “Everything is going according to plan. Those who are in the spot in Latvia have already stepped up and are preparing for the tournament, but those who went to their clubs in Europe will join the team next week. in full strength for the test matches with Denmark,” “to Latvijas Avīze” said the general manager of the national team Rūdolfs Kalvītis. The national team of Latvia will compete against Slovenia (August 29), Ukraine (August 30) and France (September 1) for the same ticket to the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

Persuade club managers

The list of candidates will be announced on Friday, so the general manager did not want to get into the details until then. The selection of the team is up to the coaches, and Vītoliņš has previously stated that he also hopes for the help of all our NHL players. Kalvīš’s job, on the other hand, was to identify clubs in Europe and negotiate so that we would send him to the national team as soon as possible. The rules state that the national team break will begin on August 26, when the players who are interested in the national team must be officially announced.

“The conditions of the clubs were very different. There were those who were immediately ready to release players earlier than the specified date, but there were also those who were lazy and did not want to give it up.

I had to communicate a lot with club managers, including agents, to tell them both about the training plan and because the players are really preparing in Riga and will not be lazy, that the conditions will be at the top notch for them. Clubs, on the one hand, can be understood because they are preparing intensively for the new season, test matches are being played.