With the game on his stick in overtime and an epic scoring slump weighing him down mentally, Roman Horak just tried to keep it simple.
The approach worked, as Horak slid a shot between the legs of Rockford IceHogs goalie Henrik Karlsson on a breakaway at 2:17 of the extra session to lift the Abbotsford Heat to a 4-3 victory on Saturday.
It was the first goal in 25 games for the sophomore pro from the Czech Republic – the last time he put the puck in the net in an AHL game was way back on Dec. 30.
"It felt like a big rock fell off me," Horak said afterward, the relief written all over his face.
"If you're scoring every game, you feel like you can do whatever you want (on the breakaway). But when you don't score for a while like me, you just try to shoot it five-hole.
"It worked out – finally."
Horak's offensive production has served as a barometer of the Heat's success this season.
He opened the campaign on a white-hot scoring binge, potting 10 goals in the first nine games to seize the early AHL lead. Not coincidentally, Abbotsford spent much of the first three months of the season in first place overall.
Horak's scoring pace was obviously unsustainable, but his touch around the net seemed to evaporate entirely – he mustered just four goals in his next 46 AHL games before breaking through on Saturday (though he did score once during a six-game NHL stint with the Calgary Flames). In the meantime, the Heat's fortunes also hit the skids, and they entered Saturday's game on the wrong side of the playoff bubble.
But with the Abby club facing a virtual must-win on Saturday to keep their fading post-season hopes alive, Horak came through in the clutch.
Sven Baertschi set the table, shaking off an IceHogs checker and feathering a pass over to an onrushing Horak, who set off a celebration at the Abbotsford Entertainment and Sports Centre.
"It was a great play by Sven," Horak acknowledged. "He had two guys on him and he was able to pass it to me. I didn't want to pull some fancy move, so I just shot it five-hole and it worked out. I'm really happy.
"At the beginning of the season, I scored everything – whatever I shot, it just went in," he added. "(Lately) it's been the complete opposite. Hopefully with this goal, I can be the same Roman I was at the beginning."
The Heat were tough-luck losers in a 5-2 defeat on Friday – they out-shot the IceHogs 35-26, and head coach Troy Ward, after reviewing the game tape, had the scoring chances at 25-11 in favour of Abbotsford.
Saturday's game was the opposite story, as Rockford out-shot Abbotsford 42-25 but suffered the loss.
The Heat built a 2-0 lead on goals by Ben Walter and Tyler Ruegsegger, only to watch the IceHogs rally in the third period on goals by Brandon Pirri and Ben Smith.
The hosts surged ahead once again with 4:25 remaining, as Max Reinhart fed Baertschi from behind the net and the Swiss rookie made good from point-blank range.
But the IceHogs bounced back once again, with a questionable holding penalty on Heat forward Ben Street paving the way. With Karlsson on the bench to give Rockford a six-on-four power play, Rostislav Olesz took a feed from Smith in the slot and rifled a top-corner shot over the glove of Heat goalie Danny Taylor with just 9.4 seconds left on the clock.
Ward had tapped both Horak and Baertschi to kill the penalty, though neither player is a regular on the Heat PK.
"They really don't play four-on-five a lot, but Sven and Roman have to be ready to kill penalties for the Calgary Flames when they go up," Ward explained. "That's part of our job here, and I felt bad for them to get scored on."
As for Horak's scoring travails, Ward said that the forward's hot streak at the start of the season was something of an aberration. He's not necessarily a natural sniper – more of a jack-of-all-trades who is capable of chipping in offensively.
"If he skates the game really well . . . he showed you tonight he can play in the National Hockey League," Ward said.
"We look at putting him in opportunities through the process to score goals, but yet, I don't think that's his calling as a professional hockey player. He's more of a control game – he's a very smart man, and he plays a very systematical, good game for you as a coach."
In the jam-packed Western Conference standings, the teams ranked seventh through 11th all have 69 points. Abbotsford (30-28-9) and Rockford (33-28-3) are part of that group, but every other team has at least three games on the Heat.
The Heat head to Ontario for a trio of games this week – Wednesday and Friday at the Hamilton Bulldogs, and Saturday at the Toronto Marlies.
Ward's charges have enduring a grueling second-half schedule, and the Heat bench boss said he's sensed his group is worn out.
"It was so bad on tape (from Friday's game), we texted them at 7:30 this morning and told them to stay home – we didn't even skate this morning," Ward said.
"I'm really proud of them today. . . . They could have folded at 2-2, they could have folded at 3-3. I'm a lucky guy. It's a good group to coach."