Vernon, BC: The effort was better, but the result was just short as the Vernon Vipers lost a 3-1 decision to the West Kelowna Warriors.
“I thought we had some compete tonight,” said Assistant Coach of the Vipers Colton Sparrow. “The first period was undisciplined and it hurt us a bit, but our third was a good period, just not enough. We need to get some rest and be ready for next week.”
Connor Elliott scored the lone goal for the Vipers, his first of the preseason. The Coldstream, BC product and third year BCHLer let a solid wrist shot away from the blue line that found it’s way through a maze of bodies.
“We played a hard third period, did a lot of good things and created chances,” said Connor Elliott. “We just need to play like that throughout the whole game and not take shifts off to give ourselves the best chance to win.”
Luke Pakulak and Liam Payne assisted on the Elliott marker.
Ethan David made 17 saves on 20 shots.
The big story of the night was the play of Warrior goaltender Rorke Applebee who made 26 saves on 27 shots. He was great all weekend long making 50 saves on 51 shots.
The West K offense came from Johannes Lokkeberg, Jack Pridham and Landen Hilditch.
For the second straight game, this game had some feistiness to it. Each team would get 6 powerplay opportunities, but both penalty kill units were perfect.
The Vipers wrap up the preseason with a 3-2 record.
The group will head to Salmon Arm to get the regular season started on Friday night, 7pm at the Shaw Centre.
