With a postseason berth within reach, the University of Regina's women's hockey team will finish off the regular season this weekend with a pair of home games against the Alberta Pandas.

The Cougars split their two games against Saskatchewan last weekend, while the Manitoba Bisons helped out Regina with a pair of wins over UBC. The Cougars and the Thunderbirds have identical 7-14-1 records, but Regina holds the tiebreaker because of its 3-1 record against UBC this season.

To qualify for the playoffs, the Cougars have to compile at least as many points against Alberta this weekend as UBC collects in Lethbridge. That won't be an easy task for the Cougars, as the No. 3-ranked Alberta Pandas come into the weekend in first place in Canada West with a 20-2-0 record.

The Cougars do have at least one circumstance working in their favour, however. For Saturday's game, Alberta head coach Howie Draper will be without the services of five players who will be travelling to China to represent Canada at the FISU Games. Forwards Leah Copeland and Jennifer Newton and defencemen Andrea Boras, Stephanie Ramsay, and Rayanne Reeve will all miss the second game of the weekend series.

The two teams will meet this weekend for the first time since Alberta came up with 9-0 and 7-3 wins over the Cougars in Edmonton. Since then, however, the Cougars have been almost a .500 hockey team, going 7-8-1 to climb back into the playoff hunt. The Cougars are also winners of four of their last five games and have gotten at least one point in five of their past six.

Even without five players, the Pandas will still have plenty of firepower to throw at the Cougars. Tarin Podloski, Miranda Miller, and Alana Cabana are one-two-three in conference scoring, while Dana Vinge leads Canada West with a 1.02 goals-against average and also boasts a sparkling .922 save percentage.

For the Cougars, the offensive load has been shouldered by two lines. The veteran line of Kara McGeough, Kelsie Graham, and Kelcie McCutcheon have combined for 20 goals this year, while the all-rookie line of Paige Wheeler, Rianne Wight, and Gina Campbell has scored 15 – most of which have been tallied in the second half of the season.

Regina and Alberta will square off on Friday and Saturday night at the Sherwood Ice Sports Centre, with faceoff scheduled for 7 p.m. on both nights.

Following this weekend, the teams will break for three weeks before beginning the first round of the playoffs on March 6.

As always, live statistics will be available at www.reginacougars.com.