The High River Flyers have an uphill battle on their hands heading into the Heritage Junior "B" Hockey League playoffs.

The Flyers take on the defending champion Coaldale Copperheads in the best-of-three "elimination round" starting Wednesday night in Coaldale.

Flyers Coach Tyson Avery says to win, they have to outwork the Copperheads.

"They're a very skilled team. And they have one of the league's top point producers in Connor Gross on the team. So, we've got to shut him down and we've got to outwork them and get more shots on net."

Gross led the Copperheads with 35 goals and 41 assists this season.

He and fellow forward Craig Lyon were #2 and #3 in league scoring with 76 and 65 points respectively, while High River's leading scorer was Damon Turner with 11 goals and 19 assists for 30 points, good enough for 54th in the league.

Avery says other keys to the game are keeping the Copperheads bottled up when they're in the Flyers zone and not to get into a "run and gun" game with the high scoring Copperheads who finished with 71 more goals and 29 more points than the sixth place Flyers in the regular season.

Game two goes Friday in High River, with a game three, if needed, back in Coaldale on Saturday.

The Strathmore Wheatland Kings get their best-of-three opening round series off the ground Wednesday night as well as they're in Banff to battle the Academy Bears.

The winners of these two series move on to face the Okotoks Bisons and Cochrane Generals in the South Division Semi-Finals.