U18: Latvia 2025 Roster Talk

[Namejs]

With both the Latvian U18 and U17 national teams taking part in exhibition tournaments, the time is night to start a thread about this very talented group of players.

While the U18s already finished their job and beat Norway, Denmark and Austria, curiously enough about half of the leading kids were actually missing from the U18 squad. Apparently, the Latvian Hockey Federation decided to split the talent evenly across the U18 and U17 national teams in order to take a look at a larger set of players. The U17 team will face Switzerland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria and Ukraine and notably includes Klaucans and Berzkalns both of whom had quite a lot of ice time at the U20 Worlds.

The U17 team has other great prospects like Reidzans, Grundmanis, Rutkis, Malisevs along with one of the top lines of HS Riga. It will be very interesting to see whether they can beat Slovakia or Switzerland/Czechia.

These 2 exhibition tournaments are the last big filter before the U18 Worlds and the scope and breadth of talent being tried out is encouraging and the LHF has done a real good job so far.

Now, about the U18 tournament:
Serkins 5 pts
Utnans 5 pts
Polis 5 pts
A. Smits (D) 2 pts

A couple of good news here - the struggling HS Riga still has a few pretty good players and I was a little surprised at how productive Utnans and Polis were. However, the biggest surprise to me was how good A. Smits is at skating and moving the puck as a defenceman. This guy will probably be on the top pairing for us. He's played in Finland since he was 14 so I had not seen him play before. An exciting prospect.

Waiting for the U17 tournament (EYOF), which will be streamed live online, by the way. Starts Feb 12. The first international test for Grundmanis, Malisevs and others I've praised before.

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