The Quad City Mallards, proud International Hockey League (IHL) affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, today announced that Mallards right wing Juris Stals has been named to the Latvian national team for the 2010 International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship, which begins today in Germany.

Stals, 28, scored 26 goals and totaled 52 points in 74 games with the Mallards last season.  The 6’ 3”, 200-pound Stals ranked third on the team in scoring and led the Mallards with 14 power play goals.  This marks the third time Stals will skate for his country in the World Championship.   He also played for Latvia at the 2006 and 2008 tournaments.

Stals and Latvia will play their first game of the tournament tomorrow against Switzerland before facing Canada next Monday and closing out the first round next Wednesday against Italy.

Stals spent three seasons in Europe before joining the Mallards last fall.  The Riga native split the 2008-09 season between two of his hometown teams- Dinamo Riga of the Kontinental Hockey League and HK Riga 2000 of the Belarus League.  Stals has also taken to the ice in the Czech Republic with H.C. Trinec, in Belarus for Neman Grodno and in Russia for Torpedo Nizhny-Novgorod. 

The New York Rangers selected Stals in the ninth round of the 2001 National Hockey League Entry Draft with the two hundred sixty-ninth overall pick.  After spending two seasons in junior hockey with Sarnia and Owen Sound in the Ontario Hockey League, Stals turned pro with the Hartford Wolfpack- the Rangers’ American Hockey League affiliate- at the end of the 2002-03 campaign.  He also spent the following season in Hartford before moving on to the ECHL’s Charlotte Checkers for two years.