Ice game in 1980 but winning the World Championships on other occasions (1978, 1979 and 1983). Balderis was named the best forward of the 1977 Ice Hockey World Championship. Despite his continuing high scoring results, he was not selected for the Soviet National team for the 1984 Winter Olympics, possibly because of political or national reasons (in those years the Soviet team consisted of sportsmen only from Moscow ice hockey teams, any other Soviet cities or Soviet republics were not represented). Thus Balderis became the all-time top scorer among those Soviet ice hockey forwards who played for the national team but had never been awarded the Olympic gold medal. Goaltenders Vitālijs Samoilovs and Artūrs Irbe also starred for the Soviet team in the 1980s, Irbe was the best goaltender of the 1990 Ice Hockey World Championship. Samoilovs was the backup goaltender on the gold-medal winning Soviet team at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. The best season for Dinamo Rīga came in 1987/1988, the first season when the Soviet Elite League instituted an NHL-style playoff system. Dinamo Rīga finished third in the regular season and upset Dynamo Moscow in the semi-finals, before losing to CSKA Moscow, the perennial Soviet champions of the 1980s, in the finals. After Latvia regained independence in 1991, Latvia restored its membership in the IIHF and the Latvian national team returned to international competitions. As a new team, they were initially placed in the C Pool (third division) of the World Championships and had to qualify for the higher level competitions. They debuted in the B Pool in 1994 and the top-level A Pool in 1997. Latvia has played in the A Pool championship since then. The best result was 7th place in 1997, 2004 and 2009. While not a medal contender, the Latvian team has produced some upsets over the top teams in World Championships, defeating the USA twice (in 1998 and 2001) and arch-rival Russia twice (in 2000 and 2003). Latvia competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics, the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2010 Winter Olympics. , twenty four Latvian ice hockey players have played in NHL. The first of them was Helmuts Balderis, who came to play in Minnesota North Stars team at the age of 36 in the 1989–90 season. Sandis Ozoliņš, Artūrs Irbe, Sergejs Žoltoks and Kārlis Skrastiņš have been the most successful ones. Ozoliņš is the only Latvian to win the