“He's ready for the next step” Why Alberts Šmits will have scouts watching at the Olympics
Back in December, during the 2026 World Junior Championship, Latvian coach Artis Ābols was asked about how close defenceman Alberts Šmits was to being “NHL ready.”
“He’s only 18, just turned 18 actually, but he’s ready for whatever level he wants to attack,” Ābols told Elite Prospects at the time. “He’s ready for challenges, he has things to learn, but he’s always ready to take next steps.”
Over the next two weeks, Šmits is going to have an opportunity to prove that during the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
The 18-year-old defender is the only draft-eligible player in the men's hockey tournament, and with Latvia’s schedule, including games against the United States and a German team featuring Leon Draisaitl and Moritz Seider, it will be his first true head-to-head tilt against NHLers.
“I’m fascinated to watch him in that space. It’s a really great opportunity to see how he’ll translate, especially in that first game against the United States,” one NHL scout said. “He’s an impressive prospect, and we don’t always get opportunities like this in a guy's draft year in the Olympics."
Šmits has been on NHL scouting radars for a while now. He’s been living on his own and playing in Finland since he was 13, but the 2026 World Juniors were his coming-out party to the wider hockey world. In five games in Minnesota, Šmits tilted the ice for a Latvian team that was scrappy but under-manned, which included a 2-1 overtime loss to Canada in round robin play.
Šmits measures in at 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds. That profile easily grabbed scouts' attentions, while his demeanor – he’s very stoic both on and off the ice – helped build the vision for NHL teams of a ready-to-play lockdown defender with offensive upside.
Šmits has continued to make an impression since World Juniors ended. In 37 Liiga games with Jukurit, he has 13 points, the most amongst draft eligibles, and is regularly playing more than 20 minutes per game in Finland’s top league. Šmits also plays with an element of violence, both offensively and defensively, that he channels well in all three ones.
That’s one of the reasons it’s fitting that Šmits will play head-to-head with Seider at the Olympics. While he originally said he doesn’t have any favorite players he copies, Šmits later relented and said he models his game partially after Seider, the German who is now a bona fide Norris Trophy candidate for the Detroit Red Wings.
Both from smaller hockey nations, Seider’s NHL journey could be a bit of a preview of what Šmits will go through on his. After being drafted by Detroit in 2019, sixth overall, Seider spent one season in the AHL, but returned to Europe for a season in Sweden to better acclimate his game. The move paid off, and Seider won the Calder Trophy in 2022.
“I think sometimes for guys coming from Europe, it’s about us finding comfort on and off the ice,” Seider said. “For me, the growth and journey wasn’t always a straight line, it was realizing that it’s ok to work at my pace, to go back to Sweden. And it paid off.”
Seider said international play with Germany also made a big difference in his growth.
“You get the chance to play at World Championships, to play against top guys in Europe and the NHL before you get there,” Seider said. “That’s something that if you are from Canada or the United States, you don’t get that chance. That’s where you turn it into an advantage.”
While Seider said he doesn’t know Šmits personally, he said the Olympics will probably offer that opportunity for a young defender to amplify his game before he reaches the NHL. That going head-to-head with NHLers at 18, in hockey’s first true best-on-best Olympics since 2014, can only help a player round out his game.
“It’s the mental and decision-making skills that you add to the physical when you play in [tournaments] like that, like for me at Worlds,” Seider said. “I’m sure for someone like him, that’ll be what he dives into and takes from it.”
