The Portage Islanders defeated the Winkler Royals 4-1 closing out their South Eastern Manitoba Hockey League best-of-5 series at the PCU Centre in Portage la Prairie. Islanders player A.J Spiller says the team is fortunate their hard work ended up paying off in the game.

"We worked pretty hard, we kind of got some bounces that weren't going our way earlier in the series and kind of knew that if we stuck with it it would come out way. It did tonight."

Spiller says that the Islanders will have to work on the basics and stay in a good mindset to make their next game against Carman a success.

"Our top guys need to play like our top guys and our other guys need to fill in when they need to. Carman is a good team so we are expecting a pretty good series because we played them pretty hard all year and they played us the same way."

The Islanders will advance to the semi-finals to take on Carman.