Friday night at the Crystal Centre saw the Drumheller Dragons make their one and only regular season visit. After a strong start the Storm were rewarded with a powerplay and they wasted no time getting on the board as Scott Milnthorp converted a nice cross crease pass from Sam Lawson with the second assist going to Tanner Labbe. Grande Prairie carried the play for most of a sloppily played first period.
The second frame started quickly as the play went end to end early the saw a fight break out between Storm captain Taylor Cote and Dragon captain Brandon Boxandall that was a spirited draw. However that outcome seemed to give the Dragons some life as they took the play to the Storm for the next portion of the period and were rewarded with goals from Stefan Virtanen and Brody Jamieson a little over 2 minutes apart. Grande Prairie earned a powerplay late in the period and Mike Forsyth was rewarded for going to the net as a Gus Correale centreing pass bounced off his leg to tie the game at 2-2 heading into the third. The shots after 2 were 16-13 in favor of the visitors.
The third period started with the Storm shorthanded for 1:19 which they killed off and seemed to gain some momentum from for the next 7 minutes. Both goaltenders played well with the game knotted at 2 as Nick Kulmanovsky and Chris Wray were solid for their respective teams and had a big part in taking this game to overtime.
24 seconds into the extra period with the teams skating 3 aside Storm captain Taylor Cote broke up a Dragon rush then took off on a partial 2 on 1 with Jordan Mctaggart, Cote took the puck to the net hard and was rewarded with a home team bounce as the Storm would go on to win 3-2 and in doing so earn a valuable 2 points to keep pace in the highly competitve Northern Division. Fianl shots on net were 23-21 in favor of the Storm. Grande Prairie is back on the ice tomorrow night as the Okotoks Oilers are in town for a 7:30pm faceoff.