Today in Skelleftea’s first game back after break, Axel Holmstrom finally netted his first goal of the season. Before today’s game he had 8 assists in 16 games and in a 3-2 overtime win this afternoon, Homer had an assist, a goal, and played a part in the overtime winner as well.
First Axel Holmstrom won the faceoff, or at least maintained enough control for his teammate to get control of the puck and send it back to the point, and boom. 1-0 Skelleftea and Holmstrom with an assist.
Holmstrom tallied his first goal of the season on the power play, with a well placed shot to put Skelleftea up 2-0. I love his reaction after it went it; pure joy and relief to finally get a goal. You may recognize #21 in the celebratory hug as Jonathan Ericsson’s big brother Jimmie Ericsson, who’s captain of Skelleftea.
In overtime on the power play, Axel didn’t get an assist, but you can see him feed the puck to John Norman behind the goal line which started the passing that led to the OT game winning goal.
Holmstrom was centering the 3rd line, played 16:45 TOI, and was 66.67% on faceoffs. You may have noticed that Homer was wearing a full face shield in this game. That’s because he took a took a puck to the face from friendly fire Saturday in a 6-0 win against the Czech Republic in the 4 Nations Tournament. In the 1st period of the game, Homstrom was engaged in a battle in front of the Czech net and he fell to the ice, one of his defensemen fired a shot form the point and it hit Homer in the face.
Axel kept a great attitude through his scoring slump, and these two tweet are priceless. First, on Holloween
Vilken kväll! Skönt med 3p. PS – är det någon som sett mitt målskytte hör gärna av er! Sågs sist i april månad 2015.
— Axel Holmström (@axelholma) October 31, 2015
Translation: “What a night! Nice with 3 p. PS-is there anyone who has seen my target shooting please let me know of you! Was seen last in april 2015.
Then he tweeted this today after scoring his goal
Sökandet avslutat. Målskyttet återfunnet i Tammerfors Finland! SkönT..
— Axel Holmström (@axelholma) November 7, 2015
Translation: “The search ended. Target shooting recovered in Tampere, Finland! Nice..
It hasn’t always been easy this season for Axel, but he handles it with humor and grace, as this interview illustrates after he scored his goal today.
Despite a turbulent pre-season with great play turnover reached Skelleftea national finals last spring, thanks to junior Axel Holmstrom, who had his definitive breakthrough. With 18 points, distributed on seven goals and eleven assists, he became the all time scorer – and expectations grew beyond. With a prominent role this season with success in the trunk, most people thought that 19-year-old would belong to one of the leading players in the team – but the point and above all the targets have not materialized. Up until now.
After eighteen goalless matches gave super talent critics comebacks. Against Orebro, he was involved in the preparatory work for Niclas Burströms 1-0 before he put the 2-0 in the numerical superiority early in the second period. It was his first SHL goal since 19 April.
It is the longest dry spell I’ve been through. I don’t want to go through it again, says Axel Holmström.
Has the preasure been to big?
I came in wrong in the league [meaning started wrong ie slow start] , then I lost confidence But I’ve had great support from the coaches who always believed in me and played me in key positions.On october 31st you ended up asking for goalscoring touch on twitter?
“Yes, exactly. Somehow I didn’t want to burry my self deeper then I already was and I tried to to work it out with a bit of humour.”
What do you write after today? “Haha, Better lay low for a while”
Shout out to Zeb of Habs Eyes On The Prize for providing some great info used in this article, for answering all my questions, and for translating when the internet let me down.
