Harijs Vītoliņš

Latvia Harijs Vītoliņš


Date of birth	April 30, 1968
place of birth	Riga , Latvian SSR
size	194 cm
Weight	102 kg

position	center
Shot hand	Left

Draft

NHL Entry Draft	1988 , 9th lap, 188th position Canadiens de Montréal
NHL Entry Draft	1993 , 9th lap, 228th position Winnipeg Jets

Career stations

until 1986	RASMS Riga
1986-1993	Dinamo Riga
1993	New Haven Senators
1993-1994	Winnipeg Jets Moncton Hawks
1994-1995	SC Rapperswil-Jona
1995-1996	Rögle BK
1996-2001	EHC Chur
2001-2005	HC Thurgau
2005-2006	Pikes EHC Oberthurgau

Harijs Vītoliņš (born April 30, 1968 in Riga , Latvian SSR ) is a former Latvian ice hockey player and current coach , who has played eight games for the Winnipeg Jets in the National Hockey League , but spent most of his career in Switzerland spent. Since April 2019 he has been Oleg Snarok's assistant coach at HK Spartak Moscow .

Career

Vītoliņš began his playing career in the Dinamo Riga youth team and played in the 1986/87 season for the first time for the first team in the Soviet elite league . In his second season for Dinamo he was able to celebrate the greatest success in the club's history with the team: the runner-up title in the Soviet league. In the summer of 1988 it chose the Montreal Canadiens at the NHL Entry Draft in the ninth round at the 188th place out, but he was not allowed to leave the Soviet Union and played until 1992 for Dinamo.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Latvia's declaration of independence, many top players left their homeland and moved to North America. So also Vītoliņš, who after a short guest appearance at EHC Chur in the National League A switched to the New Haven Senators in the American Hockey League . There he was able to convince those responsible for the Winnipeg Jets, so that he was selected again by the Jets in the ninth round in the ninth round of 228th place in the 1993 NHL Entry Draft . In the following season he was used eight times in the NHL squad of the Jets, but the rest of the season he spent with the then farm team of the Jets, the Moncton Hawks , in the AHL. About the other stations Rapperswil (NLA) and Rögle BK ( Elitserien ) he came back to EHC Chur in 1996, where he played until 2001. This was followed by a move to HC Thurgau , where he played until 2005.

International

Harijs Vītoliņš played in 1988 for the Soviet national ice hockey team at the Junior World Cup in Moscow, where the U20 team won the runner-up title. After 1991 he took part in a total of eight world championships for the Latvian national ice hockey team, where he had a significant share in the rise of Latvia to the B or A group of the IIHF and was appointed team captain in 1999 .

He was also appointed to the squad for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City , and as a special honor he was selected as the flag bearer of the Latvian Olympic squad. In 2004 he resigned from the national team in order to be able to concentrate fully on the league games, but remained with the national team as an assistant coach.

As a trainer

Latvia Harijs Vītoliņš

Coaching stations

2005-2008	Pikes EHC Oberthurgau
2004-2011	National team Latvia (Ass.)
2008-2010	HK MWD Balashicha (Ass.)
2010–2012	OHK Dynamo (Ass.)
2012-2015	HK Dynamo Moscow (Ass.)
2014-2018	National team Russia (Ass.)
2016-2018	SKA Saint Petersburg (Ass.)
2018-2019	HC Davos
since 2019	HK Spartak Moscow (Ass.)

In April 2006, Harijs Vītoliņš gave his farewell game, with a Latvian and a Czech selection faced. After the end of his playing career, he worked as a trainer for PIKES EHC Oberthurgau in 1965 in the 1st division in Switzerland. In June 2008 it was announced that Vītoliņš was hired by the Russian KHL club HK MWD Moskowskaja Oblast as an assistant coach. In 2010 HK MWD merged to become OHK Dynamo , which was renamed HK Dynamo Moscow in 2012 . In 2012 and 2013, Vītoliņš won the Gagarin Cup with the club. After the departure of Oleg Snarok , Vītoliņš was the head coach of Dynamo from 2014 before he was fired in December 2015 after a series of defeats. At the same time, he worked from March 2014 as Snarok's assistant coach for the Russian national team . At the 2018 Winter Olympics , he won the gold medal with the Sbornaja under a neutral flag, before Snarok (and with it Vītoliņš) resigned from his position.

Between 2016 and 2018, Vītoliņš was the assistant coach of SKA Saint Petersburg , also under head coach Oleg Snarok.

On December 20, 2018, HC Davos signed Vītoliņš from the National League as the successor to Arno del Curto , who had previously resigned from the post of head coach after 22 years. With HC Davos he managed to stay up and then left the club. At the end of April 2019 he was hired by HK Spartak Moscow as Oleg Snarok's assistant coach.

Career statistics

	Regular season					Play-offs
	Sp	T	V	Pt	SM	Sp	T	V	Pt	SM
Soviet. League overall	204	38	36	74	98	-	-	-	-	-
NHL overall	8th	0	0	0	4th	-	-	-	-	-
AHL total	77	34	37	71	45	20th	1	3	4th	4th
NLA total	89	34	38	72	109	-	-	-	-	-
NLB total	290	180	274	454	386	82	45	54	99	131

International

year	team	event	Sp	T	V	Pt	+/-	SM
1988	Soviet Union	U20 World Cup	7th	2	0	2		6th
1993	Latvia	C-WM	3	3	3	6th	+9	4th
1995	Latvia	B-WM	7th	3	4th	7th		16
1996	Latvia	B-WM	7th	3	6th	9		2
1997	Latvia	WM	8th	4th	5	9	−3	4th
1998	Latvia	WM	6th	1	4th	5	+2	4th
1999	Latvia	WM	6th	0	2	2	-4	6th
2000	Latvia	WM	7th	1	1	2	−1	14th
2001	Latvia	WM	6th	1	1	2	+2	4th
2002	Latvia	Olympia	4th	2	2	4th	+4	0
2002	Latvia	WM	6th	1	0	1	−2	2

( Legend for player statistics: Sp or GP = games played; T or G = goals scored; V or A = assists scored ; Pkt or Pts = scorer points scored ; SM or PIM = penalty minutes received ; +/− = plus / minus balance; PP = overpaid goals scored ; SH = underpaid goals scored ; GW = winning goals scored; ¹ play-downs / relegation )