The Kenai River Brown Bears will play two of the most important regular-season games in the franchise’s history, to date, Tuesday and Wednesday at the Soldotna Sports Center.

The Bears take on the Fresno (Calif.) Monsters at 7:05 p.m. on both nights.

Kenai River and Fresno are tied for the final playoff spot from the North American Hockey League West Division heading into the series.

The Brown Bears have a 26-22-3 record, while the Monsters also have 55 points thanks to a 23-20-9 record.

The Soldotna girls basketball team has every reason to be confident and no reason to be overconfident as it heads into the Class 4A state tournament Thursday.

The No. 4 seed Stars enter their 1:15 p.m. tilt with No. 5 Colony with a 21-4 record, which included a 14-game winning streak at the end of the year.

Soldotna, making a second consecutive trip to state for the first time, defeated the Knights 50-41 in mid-February.

The Kenai Central boys basketball team qualified Sunday for the ASAA First National Bank Alaska Basketball State Championships due to the Kards’ Winning Percentage Index.

Heading into Sunday, the Cook Inlet Academy girls and boys, the Nikolaevsk girls, the Seward girls and the Soldotna girls had already earned the Kenai Peninsula automatic berths to state in conference tournament play over the weekend.

Yet to be determined were two girls and two boys berths to the Class 4A state tournament. Those berths were determined by WPI rankings.

The Kenai River Brown Bears wanted to give their fans a chance to see how they looked in their away sweaters.

The Friday and Saturday crowds at the Soldotna Sports Center also liked getting a chance to see the way the Bears play in their brown sweaters.

Kenai River, which had a 14-7-3 road record versus a 10-13-0 home record heading into Friday’s contest, stayed hot in their away colors by winning 5-4 in a shootout on Friday and 4-3 in a barnburner on Saturday.