As most hockey watchers will tell you, anything can happen in playoff hockey - an adage the Weyburn Red Wings proved in their first post-season game to start the round-robin quarterfinals on Friday night.

Hosting their arch-rivals, the Estevan Bruins, the Wings scored late in the third period to win the opening game in the south division Pool B quarterfinals by a score of 4-3 before a sometimes-raucous crowd of 1,060 fans in the Colosseum.

The two teams came out flying from the opening faceoff, and traded goals early in the first period, with Christian Cote notching the tie about 30 seconds after the Bruins' Brett Hillier scored on Terry Denike.

The game's tempo slowed down in the last half of the period and for much of the second, with the Bruins dominating the Wings for much of that time, not allowing Weyburn out of their own zone.

"There was a lull in the second period where they really went after us with good forechecking. Those kinds of things created us some problems, but we hung in there and played hard," said coach Dwight McMillan.

Estevan scored twice in the middle frame to take a 3-1 lead on goals by Dean Pylypchuk and Preston Ryan, which stood until Ryan Rome scored late in the second period on a pass from Jacob Gradwell to make it a one-goal game.

The action picked up noticeably in the third period, particularly after Ryan Eberhardt tied the game on Gradwell's pass just past the halfway mark of the period. Brian Kerr scored the winning marker at 14:28, which sparked a major tussle on the next set of plays.

Emotions were already running high and at that point they bubbled over, beginning with pushing and shoving which quickly escalated into a number of fights behind the Estevan net. Just when the referees had these fights in hand, a Bruin jumped on another Wing out by the blue line, and then the two goalies started towards centre ice. A last-second grab of Denike by two teammates prevented them from joining the brawl.

The two goalies earned minors for leaving the crease, along with majors for fighting handed out to both sides and an extra two minutes to Estevan for instigating a fight.

Asked if he thought the game would have this level of intensity, coach McMillan said he wasn't too surprised.

"I thought it would be a fast game. Anytime you put these teams together, there are high emotions. This game had everything. It was one of those hard-fought battles, and we ended up victorious in the end," he said.

The comeback of the Wings from a 3-1 deficit to eventually claim the victory was a show of the team's character, added the coach.

"It would've been easy to give up, but we broke the bubble and we started stealing the pucks down low," said McMillan. He also gave a lot of credit to Denike for standing strong in net, making many key saves to keep the Wings in the game.

The Wings and Bruins are joined by the Yorkton Terriers in Pool B in the south division quarter-finals, which will see each team play each other twice, at home and away. Estevan fell to Yorkton on Sunday night, this time giving up a 5-1 lead to lose 6-5 in overtime.

Weyburn played Yorkton on Tuesday (past presstime) and will travel to Estevan on Thursday night. The final game in the quarter-finals will be when Yorkton comes to Weyburn on Monday night, March 13, with game time at 7 p.m. in the Colosseum.

When the quarter-final round-robins are complete, the top two teams from each pool will move on, with the remainder of the playoffs comprised of a best-of-seven series.