MONTREAL -- It was an unlucky Friday the 13th for McGill University as Concordia goaltender
Marc-Antoine Turcotte stole the show with a 39-save performance and the visiting Stingers rallied for a 3-2 victory before a McGill Homecoming crowd of 505 in OUA men's hockey at McConnell Arena. Among those on hand was Toronto Maple Leafs head coach
Mike Babcock, who performed the ceremonial faceoff and now has a 1-2 lifetime record when doing the official puck-drop at McConnell Arena.
The Stingers, who have lost nine of their last 11 confrontations with McGill, improved to 97-100-14 in 211 lifetime meetings with their cross-town rivals..
The No.5-ranked Redmen outshot their guests 41-29, including a lopsided 15-4 advantage in the third period. which was scoreless.
"We played hard for 60 minutes, but didn't play smart for 60 minutes and still had a chance to win the game," said McGill head coach
Kelly Nobes. "I liked our first period, we had them pinned in their end for a large portion of it. But in the second, we got off our game a little bit and mismanaged the puck in the neutral zone. In the third period, we kept them hemmed in their zone. We had a clear presence in their end but couldn't execute when we needed to."
Dominic Talbot-Tassi, a 5-foot-9, 185-pound defenceman from Mascouche, Que., opened the scoring at 9:48 of the first period, but Concordia's
Scott Oke tied things up at 18:12. he then set up
Jerome Verrier of Drummondville, Que., who restored the Redmen's lead to 2-1 at the 2:27 mark of the middle frame but a power-play goal by Concordia's
Alexis Pépin at 9:06 and an even-strength tally by
Charles-Éric Legaré at 14:30 proved the difference for the Stingers.
Sophomore netminder
Louis-Philip Guindon of St. Joseph du Lac, Que., stopped 26 of 29 shots in a losing cause for McGill.
The Redmen were 0-for-7 on the power play and went 5-for-6 on the penalty kill.
The teams now travel to Ottawa as McGill (2-1) visits Carleton (1-0) and Concordia (1-0) takes on the Gee-Gees (0-1), both at 7 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 14).
FACES IN THE CROWD: Aside from
Mike Babcock, who skated for the Redmen from 1983 to 1987, a plethora of Redmen hockey grads were spotted in the crowd, including Francois
Olivier, Mario
Debenedictis, Yves
Beaucage, Jacob
Gervais-Chouinard, Patrick
Delisle-Houde, John
Harris, Dr. Stephane
Beaudoin, Patrick
Belzile, Todd
Winquist, Leonard
Kelly, Jr., Brent
Bannerman, Jocelyn
Perreault, Charles
Gauthier, Mike
Nelson, Dr. Jay
McMullan, Mike
Wells,Benoit
Lafleur, David
Gourde, Dr. Dave
Flamm, Mike
Richards, Cedric
McNichol, Michael
Farmer, Drew
Reid and former assistant coach Chris
Laperle.
LINK TO BOXSCORE
