{"id":476388,"date":"2026-02-15T11:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T11:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476388\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T11:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T11:28:15","slug":"locmelis-becoming-part-of-something-big-for-latvia-at-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/476388\/","title":{"rendered":"Locmelis becoming ‘part of something big’ for Latvia at Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

He has also been a regular for Latvia on the international stage, playing in the IIHF World Junior Championship in 2022, 2023 and 2024, and at the World Championship in 2023, 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n

“He’s a great player and he’s doing everything right in his career with the path he’s on,” Latvia and Tampa Bay Lightning forward Zemgus Girgensons<\/a> said. “Boston, I would assume, will give him a shot soon to show what he’s made of. I think this is a great showing for him that he’s ready to go against top dogs.”<\/p>\n

Locmelis scored his first goal on the power play at 15:48 of the first period to tie it 1-1. Girgensons slipped the puck across the slot to Locmelis and he swept it into the net from in front of the right post.<\/p>\n

His second goal, at 8:02 of the second period to tie it again at 2-2, was a snipe of beauty.<\/p>\n

With Latvia on a 5-on-3, Locmelis got the puck below in the right circle. He stepped up toward the face-off dot, turned and ripped it short side high into the small right-corner opening between goalie Philipp Grubauer<\/a>‘s left shoulder and his head.<\/p>\n

Girgensons, who got pushed down through the crease, actually had to duck his head slightly so not to get clipped by the rising shot.<\/p>\n

“I think I heard the puck,” Girgensons said. “That could have been bad. I’m just happy he has a quality shot.”<\/p>\n

With the Olympics being the first true best-on-best tournament since the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Locmelis has never faced the level of competition he has faced in his first two games here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He has also been a regular for Latvia on the international stage, playing in the IIHF World Junior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-476388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}