Tyler Dittmer had a goal and an assist as the defending champion South East Prairie Thunder defeated the Ile des Chenes North Stars 3-1 in their Allan Cup quarterfinal that began at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday night and ended shortly after 1 a.m. on Friday.

"It's one of those games that if you can get through, it's a huge team builder," said Dittmer who opened the scoring at the 8:54 mark of the first period and then drew an assist on Blair Macauley's goal four minutes later. "We were missing something we had last year. We had a good talk before the game and really battled through the penalties and I think this is going to be a huge boost for us going forward."

Lee Goren scored for the North Stars with 73 seconds left in the opening frame to cut the Prairie Thunder's lead to 2-1.

The second period was scoreless.

Mark Agnew sealed the deal when he scored into an empty net with 35 seconds remaining.

South East goaltender Steve Christie made 24 saves while Ile des Chenes netminder Kris Westblom faced 30 shots.

The original quarterfinal schedule for Thursday featured the North Stars against the Shellbrook Elks and the Prairie Thunder against the Stoney Creek Generals.

Early Thursday afternoon it was brought to Hockey Canada's attention that Ile des Chenes used one too many imports for their round robin games against Stoney Creek and Bentley.

Each team is allowed to dress six imports and the North Stars unintentionally had seven in their lineup.

Hockey Canada ruled that Ile des Chenes had to forfeit their win over Stoney Creek and those points were given to the Generals.  

That gave second place in the division to Stoney Creek and the North Stars finished third which meant a quarterfinal meeting with South East.

"You just take it in stride," said Ile des Chenes forward Tanner Waldvogel when asked about their long day. "We're all adults. We kind of laughed it off and came back ready to go."

The Bentley Generals will face Shellbrook at 4 p.m. and the Prairie Thunder will meet the Grand-Falls Windsor Cataracts at 8 p.m. in today's semifinals.

The Cataracts beat South East 4-3 in the round robin.

Cody Danberg and Kyle Bortis had two goals each and Derek Keller had five assists as the Elks downed Stoney Creek 7-4 in the other quarterfinal which began at 8 p.m.