The Portage Collegiate Saints are set to begin their postseason qualifying round in the Winnipeg Women's High School Hockey League tonight. This will kick off a three-game series with the Dakota Lancers. This will be a matchup between the sixth-ranked Saints and the ninth-seeded Lancers. Head coach Jo-Anne Clark-Gillespie reflects on their regular-season.

"We finished in the middle of the pack in our division but 90% of our losses were by one goal and some of them were in overtime or shootouts," says Clark-Gillespie. "Our record doesn't really indicate, overall, how successful our season was on the ice, the girls did very, very well. From where we started this season we saw a lot of progress."

Clark-Gillespie says with the division having 11 teams, the first round of the playoffs is a qualifier with the top three seeds getting a bye to the next round. After that, the eight remaining teams compete in a quarter-final, semi-final, and final rounds with all three series being a best-of-three.

The Saints finished the season with a goal differential of +9, meanwhile, the Lancers ended the year with a -42 in that category. The Saints will be hoping to stay a little more discipline in this series as they were tied for the league lead in penalty minutes in the regular-season.

She explains what challenges present themselves when facing Dakota.

"In the season series we beat them both games," says Clark-Gillespie. "They were tight games, I think we won 3-1 and 1-0 over them. I'm anticipating a pretty good series and it's basically going to come down to who can have the most puck possession and who's got the legs to go through a best-of-three series in three straight days if needed."

Game one of this series takes place today at the Southdale Community Centre in Winnipeg with puck drop set for 4:30. Game two will be back in Portage tomorrow(If necessary game three will take place in Portage on Friday).