The Notre Dame Hawks scored three goals in the second period as they earned their first win of the South Eastern Manitoba Hockey League's (SEMHL) final series 4-1 over the Portage Islanders.

"The second period really tends to be our weakest period and we really talked about that. We wanted to have a strong period, and it turned out to be a really good period for us," said Notre Dame captain Steve Clark, who leads the SEMHL in playoff scoring with nine goals and 22 points in just 12 games.

Clark popped the goaltender's water bottle with a terrific short side shot over the glove hand of Mitch Wiebe, who made 30 saves in the loss, to put the Hawks up 1-0.

Clark would go on to capitalized on a power-play for his second of the evening and increased the hometown Notre Dame lead to 2-0. Shortly after the Islanders put their power-play to work and Jordyn Boyd scored the lone goal for Portage with Tanner Waldvogel and Chris Reykdal drawing the assists on the play. Before the period was over Matt Gingera and Kyle Rous found the twine to increase their lead to 4-1 after forty.

"The brought a good work ethic like they always do and got rewarded for it,'' said Islanders' forward Eric Delong. "We probably didn't work quite as hard as we needed to. I think we did have a few chances, that if they went in at the right times it might have been a different game. From start to finish I think we didn't work hard enough."

There was no scoring in the third and final period of game three.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame goaltender Brett Timmerman backstopped his team to the 'W' after a 28 save performance.

With the loss in game three, the Islander still lead the best-of-seven final series two games to one. Game four of this series goes Thursday night in Portage with puck drop at 8:00 p.m.