The Sarnia Sting will match up against the Guelph Storm in the opening round of the Ontario Hockey League playoffs.
The action gets underway on Friday night at Progressive Auto Sales Arena.
The full schedule can be found below.
During the regular season, the third-seeded Sting had two wins and a pair of shootout losses against the number six ranked Storm. That includes a 9-1 victory back on February 15.
Head Coach Alan Letang said the Storm are a hard working team and they can't take them lightly.
"It'll be a fun series, it's going to be intense and it's going to be physical," said Letang. "That's exactly what you expect when you get into the playoffs. I'm looking forward to it. It'll be close checking and attention to detail is going to be important. Special teams, details on faceoffs, and all of that stuff is going to be important. We've got to be that team that if you take penalties against us, we're going to make you pay. On the kill, we'll need guys to sacrifice and block shots, be hard on faceoffs and make sure we get pucks down the ice."
Letang said it will be great to have home ice advantage and that extra push from the Sarnia crowd.
"It's been a really good atmosphere here," he said. "That's why you play the regular season so that you get to start at home. Hopefully we can jump on them early to get the crowd into it and use this rink to our advantage."
The Sting are coming off a very successful campaign, scoring 298 goals. That ranks second in the OHL behind the Windsor Spitfires (320). Their 224 goals against was fifth fewest in the league. Sarnia had the top-ranked powerplay, scoring at a 26 per cent rate. They also had the fourth rated penalty kill at 81.4 per cent.
Individually, a number of players achieved milestones including Ty Voit who had the second most points in the OHL with 105. Windsor Matthew Maggio led the way with 111.
Nolan Burke hit the 50 goal mark, while Sasha Pastujov and Luca Del Bel Belluz potted 41 and 40 respectively. Sandis Vilmanis and Christian Kyrou each had 20 goals, just behind Voit's 24.
On the Guelph side, Matthew Poitras had a team-high 95 points, and former Sting Max Namestnikov had 39 goals to lead the team. He had 35 goals and 19 assists in 47 games after being picked up in a trade for Pastujov.
Former Sting Chandler Romeo had eight goals and four assists in 30 games in a Storm uniform.
You can hear every game on 103.9FM and 1070AM CHOK with Leigh Cunningham and Patrick DesRochers.
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Game 1 - Fri. March 31 at Sarnia, 7:05pm Game 2 - Sun. April 2 at Sarnia, 2:05pm Game 3 - Tues. April 4 at Guelph, 7:00pm Game 4 - Thurs, April 6 at Guelph, 7:00pm Game 5 - Fri. April 7 at Sarnia, 7:05pm* Game 6 - Sun. April 9 at Guelph, 2:00pm* Game 7 - Tues. April 11 at Sarnia, 7:05pm*
