Harijs Vītoliņš
Harijs Vītoliņš ( born April 30, 1968 in Riga, Latvian SSR) is a Latvian ice hockey coach and former professional ice hockey player who has completed eight games for the Winnipeg Jets of the National Hockey League during his playing career. Between 2004 and 2011 he was assistant coach of the Latvian national team and since 2008 assistant coach of HK MVD Balaschicha, OHK Dynamo Moscow Dynamo and HK.
- 2.1 International
Career
Vītoliņš began his playing career in the offspring of Dinamo Riga and played in the season 1986/87 the first time for the first team in the Soviet Elite League. In his second season for Dinamo he was able to celebrate with the team the biggest success in club history: the runner-up title of the Soviet league. In the summer of 1988, the Montreal Canadiens selected him in the NHL Entry Draft in the ninth round to 188th place out, but he could not leave the Soviet Union and played until 1992 for Dinamo.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the declaration of independence of Latvia, many top players left their home and changed to North America. So also Vītoliņš, who joined the American Hockey League after a brief stint at the EHC Chur in the National League A for the New Haven Senators. There he was able to convince the leaders of the Winnipeg Jets of himself, so that he was again selected in the NHL Entry Draft in 1993 by the Jets in the ninth round at 228th place. In the following season he was used eight times in the NHL squad of jets, the rest of the season but he spent at the former 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 the 1996 EHC Chur, where he played until 2001. Then he changed to HC Thurgau, where he played until 2005.
Internationally
Harijs Vītoliņš 1988 played for the Soviet national ice hockey team at the Junior World Championships in Moscow, where the U20 selection 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 played a key role in the rise of Latvia in the B- and A- group of the IIHF in 1999 and even intended for team captain.
He was also appointed to the squad for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and a special award, he was selected as the standard-bearer of the Latvian Olympic team. In 2004 he resigned from the national team in order to focus entirely on the league games can, the national was retained as an assistant coach.
As a coach
In April 2006 Harijs Vītoliņš gave his farewell game, with a Latvian and a Czech team faced. After the end of his playing career, he worked as manager of the Pikes Oberthurgau in the 1st league in Switzerland. In June 2008 it was announced that Vītoliņš was committed by the Russian KHL club HK MVD Moskovskaya Oblast as assistant coach. 2010 merged the HK MVD first to OHK Dynamo, which was renamed in 2012 in HK Dynamo Moscow. 2012 and 2013 won Vītoliņš the Gagarin Cup with the club.
Career Stats
Internationally
( Key to Career statistics: Sp or GP = Games Played, T or G = goals scored, V or A = achieved assists; Pts or Pts = scored points scorer, SM or PIM = received penalty minutes, / - = Plus / Minus balance sheet; PP = scored majority gates; SH = scored shorthanded goals, GW = achieved victory gates; Play-downs/Relegation 1 )