Vipers Finish Season On The Road:

Saturday night was your last chance at watching this years version of the Vernon Vipers. Unless you are making the long drive to Grande Prairie this week. The Vipers played their last home game of 2008-09 as the remainder of the teams season will be played on the road. The remainder of the Doyle Cup is held in Grande Prairie, and then the winner of that series moves on to the Royal Bank Cup in Victoria. Alot of talk around the rink this past weekend, and some figure the Storm will be a much better hockey club on their home ice. One fan stated you havnt seen anything yet, wait till you guys have to play on the bigger ice surface. I don’t think he knows the Vipers play on a much bigger ice surface in the Wesbild Centre. If you look at this series to date, heres a team that basically dominated the Grande Prairie Storm on a much smaller rink in the Civic Arena, put them on a much bigger rink in Alberta, and see how well they do. Other then the crowd, & getting use to the new rink, the Vipers are a much better and stronger team on the bigger ice surface. If the Storm thought they had troubles with the #1 line of Sahir Gill, Connor Jones & Kellen Jones in the Civic, watch out. This line is very dangerous on the bigger ice surface. Cory Kane is another Viper who is very dangerous on the bigger rinks. Playing on the much smaller Civic ice surface, your taking away the Vipers speed and skill, something they are so good with at home inside the Wesbild Centre. Mark Ferner built a big fast strong hockey club, just for this time of year. I really like the Vipers chances in Alberta, if the team can play the way they can, watch out. The Gill-Jones line is very had to stop when in the cycle down low, if the Storm had problems containing them in the Civic, wait till they see them on the bigger ice surface. Vernon did the best they could do, and that was win the two games at home. Now all they need is two more on the road with five games to do it in. The Vipers did very well on the road this season, with a 19-10-1 record during the regular season and a 6-2 road record in these Playoffs.