KINGSTON, Ont. - The No.8 nationally-ranked Queen's Gaels who finished as the top seed in the OUA will take on the eighth-seeded Waterloo Warriors to start their opening round of OUA playoffs.

Game one goes Wednesday night at 7:00 pm in Waterloo then the series shifts to Kingston as game two is Friday night at 7:30 pm at the Memorial Centre and should the series go the distance, game three will be Saturday night at 7:30 pm in Kingston. All games can be seen live on OUA.tv and tickets for the Gaels home games are available at gogaelsgo.com/tickets.

The two teams met twice during the regular season, and it was Waterloo that took two victories. The Warriors were the only team to sweep their season series over the first-place Gaels. The first meeting was a 3-2 overtime win for Waterloo as Hannah Street scored to seal the victory for the home side in October. The re-match went February 3, and the Warriors took down the Gaels 4-1 behind a 33 save performance from goaltender Stephanie Sluys.

GAELS HIGH-FLYING OFFENCE
Katrina Manoukarakis finished the season as the OUA leader in points (30), goals (15) and powerplay goals (5) while teammate Clare McKellar leads the conference in assists (17) just two ahead of Manoukarakis. Waterloo will need to keep Manoukarakis off the scoresheet if they hope to get by the Gaels in the opening round.

The Gaels as a team averaged 2.75 goals per game which was third best in the OUA while Waterloo tallied a 2.08 mark, seventh best in the conference. The Warriors were led by Emma Pye who finished with 14 points on the season and defender Stephanie Digness lead the team in goals with six.

DUALING GOALIES
Gaels goaltender Stephanie Pascal and Warriors netminder Stephanie Sluys are expected to go head-to-head between the pipes in this series and either of the two veteran netminders are capable of stealing the series for their respective teams. Sluys finished with a 1.73 GAA and 0.939 save percentage in last year's playoffs across six games against the two highest scoring OUA teams in Western and Guelph. Pascal has had a standout season meanwhile for the Gaels and was recently named the U SPORTS female athlete of the month for January. Pascal led the OUA in wins with 14, was second in save percentage at 0.944 and had the third best goals-against average at 1.33.

SQUEEKED IN
The Warriors were able to squeak into the playoffs in their last game of the season as they defeated Laurentian 2-0 to secure the eighth and final playoff spot. Waterloo had lost their previous three games and put themselves in a must-win position to qualify. Waterloo lost six of their final eight games of the season as they head to the playoffs.

SPECIAL TEAMS
Queen's scored 15 powerplay goals this season ranking second in the OUA with a 16.7% efficiency, on the penalty kill they were the top-ranked team with a 95.1% margin.

Waterloo finished as the eighth-ranked powerplay unit scoring 12 goals on the season to a tune of 11.4%. While on the penalty kill they finished with an 85% efficiency which ranked 11th of 13 OUA teams.