BOSTON, Mass. -- EHL regular season champion New Hampshire Jr. Monarchs will face the second-seeded Northern Cyclones in a best-of-five series to determine the Eastern Hockey League playoff champion and decide who gets the EHL's automatic bid to USA Hockey Tier III National Championship.

The series will begin Friday at Tri-Town Arena in Hooksett, N.H., with a 7:10pm puck drop.  The entire series schedule can be found on the EHL website schedule page.

The Monarchs' path to the finals began with two-game sweeps of the 16th-seeded New Jersey Titans and the 14th-seeded Valley Jr. Warriors.  In the EHL semifinals the Monarchs were pushed to a deciding Game 3 by the sixth-seeded Boston Bandits.  

The Northern Cyclones' path consists of sweeps over the 13th-seeded Philadelphia Revolution, seventh-seeded and defending champion Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Knights and the third-seeded Philadelphia Little Flyers.  During the regular season the Cyclones were runners-up to the Monarchs in the EHL North Division as the two teams distanced themselves from the rest of the league wtih 71 and 66 points, respectively.

The winner of the EHL Playoff Championships will automatically advance to the USA Hockey Tier III Junior National Championships to be held April 3-7, 2014 in Simsbury, Conn.  The runner-up will face the runner-up of the Metropolitan Junior Hockey League for the final, at-large berth to the Nationals.