The Portage Collegiate Institute (PCI) Saints lost their opening match of the Winnipeg Women's High School Hockey League Playoffs yesterday. They fell 4-3 to 10th place Fort Richmond in game one of their best-of-three series.

This game was quite similar to their first meeting of the regular season, in that Fort Richmond's Hannah Pales led her team to victory with all four Centurion goals.

"She's one of the best players I've seen in our league in a long time," say Jo-Anne Clark-Gillespie, head coach of the Saints. "Her size, strength, and her skill are very impressive and we had trouble containing her, and we had that same problem in game one of the season. We shut her down in December in our second game against them but she's a very dominant player and we'll have to change our game plan a little bit for Wednesday."

Bailey Grantham, Kiera Shwaluk, and Tryniti Mercier each scored for the Saints.

"Offensively we outshot them again, out-chanced them, and we did a lot of good things in their zone from the red line in. They have a strong goalie too, she faced 31 shots and we talked about getting three goals on a goaltender like her is a good thing. We just have to tighten up in our own zone and take Pales out of the game. We can't let her run amok among us. She did whatever she wanted in game one."

Game two is Wednesday in Portage la Prairie and the Saints need to win to stay alive.

"The girls have to play like it's their possible last game of the season because it could be just that," adds Clark-Gillespie."They have to play with some desperation and some urgency. We want to see them play with a lot more emotion, and a lot more aggression."

Puck drop is 4 p.m. Wednesday at Stride Place. Game three is scheduled for Thursday at the BDO Centre.