Pat Svoboda Scores First VHLM Goal

[StamkosFan 72]

Pat Svoboda, the acclaimed Swedish goal scorer, finally got the monkey off his back by netting his first VHLM goal. The Ottawa Lynx were facing Halifax 21st, and Ottawa's Elias Dahlberg had just tied the game up less than a minute before, with exactly 12:00 remaining in the second period. Mark Gebauer won a faceoff in Ottawa's end and fed the puck up to Svoboda. With strides that seemed leisurely, Svoboda used his bulky 6'5'' frame to grind his way past the defense, and leaned forward, drawing his stick back as he wound up for a ferocious slapshot. The blazing puck rocketed under Cole Mertz's left blocker, and the right winger was able to celebrate his first goal in North America. Ottawa took a 3-2 lead, and as Halifax failed to score for the remainder of the game, Svoboda's goal ended up being the Game Winning Goal, another feature that will no longer show as a zero in the stats column. The Lynx padded their margin in the third, and would finish with a 4-2 victory.

 

"I had a conversation with my coaches, and obviously I was nervous in my first few games, so I was a bit hesitant to shoot the puck. But the type of game I've always played is to bombard the net with a ton of shots, so they encouraged me to revert to being that volume shooter. I got 5 shots on goal that game, and I packed a lot of speed into the one that went in. The feeling as it whistled past the goaltender was incredible; the first goal is always very special, even more so to a guy like me who prides himself on being a sniper," said Pat Svoboda. "And we went on to win because we played hard for the entire 60 minutes, and we put a lot of rubber on net. We out-shot them, and that's important, because like Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Hopefully, I'll get some more goals in the upcoming game, and back up my reputation. We need some more scoring out there, and this game was a great start."