Game 5 of Round 3

In Vernon at the Wesbild Centre the Salmon Arm Silverbacks erased a two goal deficit to force overtime where a controversial goal handed the Vipers a 3-2 victory in the game as well as a 3-2 series lead in the Interior Conference Finals. After a failed Silverbacks clear was kept in the zone by Vernon's Steven Weinstein he took a shot that trickled behind netminder Kris Moore. At this point the referee in the zone without view of the puck went to his mouth with his whistle while Aaron Hadley poked the loose puck into the net. After immediately waving off the goal the referee talked to the other ref along with one linesman and then pointed to the net to signal the end of the game.

Down 2-0 the Apes got within one goal with 40 seconds left in the second period as shorthanded Josh Manson cleared the puck out of his zone to Mike Hammond in the neutral zone who dropped a pass to the trailing Morgan Zulinick and the 1994 born winger buried the puck over the glove hand for his second goal of the playoffs.

In the third period Salmon Arm tied the game when Brett Knowles passed out of his zone to Devin Gannon whose initial shot was blocked but following up the play Clinton Atkinson found the biscuit and snapped home his second of the postseason.

The Vipers developed a two-goal lead with a powerplay marker in both the first and second period. After an atrocious blow to the head penalty assessed to Manson Darren Nowick tipped home a great Ryan Renz pass on the doorstep to opening the scoring. On the "infraction" the Vipers' player carrying the puck up ice bent over forwards reaching for the puck at the blueline as Manson made contact at full speed. Dylan Walchuk scored the second powerplay tally after a pass out of the corner from Patrick McGillis.

Overall the Snakes went two-for-seven on the man-advantage in 10:10 while the Silverbacks were zero-for-three in only 4:45 of powerplay time.