The Milk Provincial "AAAA" Hockey Championships start today in Portage la Prairie.

The Portage Collegiate Institute (PCI) Trojans are the host club for this year's tournament. They fell in the Zone IV Hockey Playoffs to Carman, who fell to eventual champions the Morden Thunder. They're in the first game of the tournament this morning at 9 a.m. against the Dakota Collegiate Lancers.

"It's kind of a guessing game really when going up against an unknown like in this tournament," says Trojans' head coach Chris DeLong. "You can look at Dakota's stats from their season but unless you saw them in person, you shouldn't rely on stats. If you do, though, it tends to look like they're a defensive team, not one of the highest scoring, but from what I've heard they were highly ranked for the better part of the season."

The Trojans play again at 1 p.m. against Zone IV rival Morden Thunder.

"I feel if we can play our game we'll see some success today," says DeLong. "Staying out of the penalty box and being strong in our end. We're going to count on our regular good goaltending, and wait for a bounce or two to go our way. We didn't score a whole lot of goals this year, but we're in a situation where if we can win one game we're in the Semi-final."

The round robin wraps up tonight at 7 p.m. with Morden facing last year's champions St. Paul's Collegiate. The championship game is Monday.

"All I can say to our opponents is be wary of the host," adds DeLong. We've got nothing to lose and we are definitely underdogs. I hope our boys relish playing in that role."

Here's how the tournament is broken down.

Pool A
1) St. Paul’s
2) Morden
3) Vincent Massey (Brandon)

Pool B
1) Dakota
2) Vincent Massey (Winnipeg)
3) Portage

Friday, March 10th
Round Robin
9:00 a.m. - B1 vs B3
11:00 a.m. - A1 vs A3
1:00 p.m. - B2 vs B3
3:00 p.m. - A2 vs A3
5:00 p.m. - B1 vs B2
7:00 p.m. - A1 vs A2

Saturday, March 11
Semi-Finals
2:00 p.m. - 1st A vs 2nd B
4:30 p.m. - 1st B vs 2nd A

Monday, March 13
Championship, 7:00 p.m.