There's Manitoba AAA Midget Hockey in Portage la Prairie today.

The Central Plains Capitals host Southwest at the BDO Centre. They've got a shot at hopping over Brandon in the standings with the right combination of wins and losses from their opponents, but it starts with a victory over the Cougars.

"We can't take them lightly at all," says head coach Brad Gnidziejko. "Our last twelve games we've only been outshot three times. We just have to keep that up and eventually, we'll see the fruits of our labour. (Southwest) is a good test for us, they're a quick team. If we stick to our game and our forecheck I think we give ourselves a chance to win. If we can beat them we set ourselves up to pass Brandon so it's a big game tonight."

The Caps will have to get things done without leading scorer Joey Moffat, who's out for the remainder of the season.

"In our game against Eastman a couple of weeks ago Moffat took a bit of a blindside hit and went into the boards bad in a bit of a helicopter spin and hurt his shoulder. Third-degree separation so there's no chance of him coming back at all," says Gnidziejko. "We've played great hockey in his absence, though. People are stepping up, and since then everyone on the team has really picked up their game. We outshot Norman 62-18 or something like that with 10-1 and 7-1 victories, and they aren't the toughest team but our whole team looked great."

"It's a good time of the year for guys to be pulling together, it's a bad time to lose your top scorer," laughs Gnidziejko. "There's no better reason to pull a group of guys together, and the they've really shown they're here to win."

The Caps final game of the season is tomorrow in Winnipeg against the Thrashers. They host the Cougars today at the BDO Centre with puck drop set for 4 p.m.