There will be a play-in game in the USPHL NCDC’s North Division after the regular season to determine the fourth and final team that qualifies for the postseason.

There’s a good chance the Twin City Thunder will be one of the teams in that game.

The one-off play-in game was a result of the Boston Advantage ownership becoming non-compliant with league rules in the middle of January. United States Premier Hockey League Commissioner Bob Turow said Wednesday that he wouldn’t comment on the exact rule the Advantage broke.

“Yeah, kind of an internal thing,” Turow said. “Like I said, every league has its rules, and this is kind of an internal thing, and I will just leave it at that.”

The Advantage became compliant with the league this past Monday, according to Turow.

Boston’s record became frozen at 18-12-4 (40 points) after the game against the New Hampshire Jr. Monarchs on Jan. 21.

The Advantage continued to play games after they became were non-compliant, since Turow didn’t want to punish the players who had nothing to do with the situation.

“The players are what our league is all about,” Turow said. “We want to showcase them to schools and advance them to where they want to get to. So we allowed the Boston Advantage players to continue playing, hoping that the ownership would become compliant.”

The Advantage record becomes unfrozen when they take on the South Shore Kings on Friday.

The standings on the USPHL website reflect the games the Advantage have played since, with a record of 25-17-4 (54 points). The league didn’t put 1-0 forfeits into the standings because the player stats for those games played in late January and February wouldn’t have counted toward individual players’ regular season stats. The teams who played the Advantage when their record was frozen did receive wins and losses to their regular-season record, depending on the result of the game.

Turow said it was Thunder head coach Dan Hodge’s idea about the play-in game.

“So it was going to make it very difficult for the Boston Advantage, even though they are compliant now, to make the playoffs,” Turow said. “My management team met, then we talked to some of our board, and a big driving factor behind this was one of our team (owners), Dan Hodge, (co-owner and coach of the Twin City Thunder). Again, we were thinking about the players, and we didn’t want to take the playoffs away from them.”

The Twin City Thunder (23-20-4, 50 points) currently sit in fourth, but are three points back of the third-place Kings. Hodge said the Thunder likely have to win out and have the Kings lose their final four games to surpass South Shore to not appear in the play-in game. The Thunder’s win over the Jr. Monarchs on Thursday means Twin City can finish no lower than fourth in the division.

Hodge wanted his team to earn their way into the postseason.

“You feel bad for the Advantage kids, they have worked hard, and they have achieved some points,” Hodge said. “They have played hard all year. No team wants to backdoor their way into the playoffs, right? You want to earn it. We talked about it, and Bob called me and said, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘Hey, we want to earn it and do it the right way.'”

The Thunder host the Advantage next Wednesday at Norway Savings Bank Arena in Auburn and finish the regular season on the road against the Northern Cyclones on March 11 and South Shore on March 13.

“We just have to take care of our business and see how we do in our games, and see what (the Kings) do,” Hodge said. “It’s a weird situation, but we have the opportunity to make the playoffs or have that play-in game.”

The fourth-place finisher will host the Advantage in the win-or-go-home game. The play-in winner will then play the top-seeded North Division team in a best-of-three series March 17-19.