{"id":456248,"date":"2026-02-13T00:53:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/456248\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T00:53:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T00:53:47","slug":"blue-jackets-elvis-merzlikins-yields-five-goals-in-olympic-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/456248\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jackets&#8217; Elvis Merzlikins: Yields five goals in Olympic opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"VideoPlayer-backgroundImage\" alt=\"default-cbs-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770878719_537_video-slate.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nhl\/teams\/CLB\/columbus-blue-jackets\/\" aria-label=\"home team page\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"TeamLogo-image\" alt=\"team logo\" src=\"https:\/\/sports.cbsimg.net\/fly\/images\/team-logos\/399.svg\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n                                                <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nhl\/players\/3107125\/merzlikins\/fantasy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Merzlikins<\/a> stopped 33 of 38 shots on goal in Latvia&#8217;s 5-1 loss to the United States in Olympic round-robin play Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Merzlikins had the odds stacked against him in Thursday&#8217;s contest and played well to not allow the game-winning goal before the 30-minute mark. His early effort Thursday reflected where he left off with Columbus before the Olympic break, as he had a 3-0-0 record, a 1.67 GAA, a .933 save percentage and a shutout across his last three starts. He&#8217;ll likely receive one more start during Olympic round-robin play and should get a game of rest if Latvia turns to Penguins&#8217; netminder Arturs Silovs to change things up.<\/p>\n<p>        More News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merzlikins stopped 33 of 38 shots on goal in Latvia&#8217;s 5-1 loss to the United States in Olympic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5108],"tags":[3644,5180,897,230,5179,7819,276,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-456248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-columbus-blue-jackets","8":"tag-blue-jackets","9":"tag-bluejackets","10":"tag-columbus","11":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","12":"tag-columbusbluejackets","13":"tag-elvis-merzlikins","14":"tag-fantasy-hockey","15":"tag-hockey","16":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116060597582934148","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}