McGill seeded No. 1 for fourth straight year  

- March 07 2010

The two-time defending national champion McGill Martlets are heading into the CIS women's hockey championship as the No. 1 seed for the fourth consecutive year.

The six-team CIS tournament, hosted for the second straight season by St. Francis Xavier University, gets under way Thursday and concludes Sunday with the gold-medal final set for 6 p.m. Atlantic Time.

SSN Canada will have live webcasts of all nine games from the tourney.

Joining Quebec conference champion McGill in Antigonish, N.S. are the No. 2-ranked Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks (OUA champions), No. 3 Alberta Pandas (Canada West champions), No. 4 Saint Mary's Huskies (AUS champions), No. 5 St. Francis Xavier X-Women (hosts and AUS finalists), as well as the No. 6 Montreal Carabins (QSSF finalists), who reach the event in their first-year of existence.

The Martlets will compete in Pool A with Saint Mary's and Montreal in the round-robin portion of the championship. Pool B is comprised of Laurier, Alberta and StFX.

The competition opens Thursday at 4 p.m. Atlantic Time with McGill beginning its quest for a three-peat against conference rival Montreal. The Pool B opener follows at 7:30 p.m. with Laurier facing Alberta.

Saint Mary's and StFX take the ice Friday against the losers of the opening-day duels.

The Martlets, who beat Laurier in the CIS final in both 2008 and 2009 to capture the first two national titles in program history, enter the week running a CIS-record 84-game overall winning streak against Canadian university opponents, dating back to a 2-1 shootout loss to Alberta in non-conference action on Dec. 30, 2007.

McGill is 7-0 against Montreal this year including a sweep of the best-of-three QSSF final. They dominated Saint Mary's 11-0 in a non-conference affair back on Nov. 21.

The CIS major award winners and the all-Canadian teams will be unveiled at a banquet Wednesday night.

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