MONTREAL -- Centre Jerome Verrier set up the opening goal and then scored the game-winner midway through the final period as No.6-ranked McGill skated to a 2-1 victory over visiting Concordia in an OUA men's hockey thriller before a near capacity crowd of 937 at McConnell Arena, Friday.

The result avenged a 3-2 set-back to the Stingers on Oct. 13 and improved McGill's record to 101-97-14 in 212 lifetime meetings with their cross-town rivals, including 10 victories in their last 12 confrontations with Concordia. More importantly, it improved McGill's regular season win streak to five, ended the Stingers win streak at five, and gave the OUA East division-leading Redmen some breathing room atop the standings with an 11-2 record, four points ahead of second-place Concordia and Carleton, who have identical 8-2-1 records.

McGill, which went 1-for-7 on the power-play, opening the scoring just 2:26 into the first period when defenceman Dominic Talbot-Tassi converted a niifty three-way passing play with Verrier and rearguard Nathan Chiarlitti, on a 5-on-3 manpower advantage. Concordia evened the count at 1-1 early in the middle stanza when Dominic Beauchemin struck pay-dirt at the 1:02 mark.

Verrier, a 5-foot-11, 185-pound economics junior from Drummondville, Que., then pounced on a loose puck in a mad scramble at 9:26 of the final stanza and jammed it past prone Concordia netminder Marc-Antoine Turcotte, who was credited with 37 saves in a losing cause. Verrier, who leads the Redmen in points, now sits third in the OUA scoring race with a 4-15-19 record in 13 games, two points shy of his career-best season total of 6-15-21 accomplished during his sophomore campaign.

"Verrier was great and led the team in ice-time tonight, which is unusual for a forward," said McGill head coach Kelly Nobes. "But with all of our power-play and penalty-killing (opportunities) in the game, he played a lot, especially in the last 10 minutes and was great at both ends of the ice."

The Redmen outshot their guests 39-22, including a 16-6 advantage in the third period. McGill earned this victory with good old fashioned hard work, killing off all eight Concordia power-plays, including a late five-minute boarding major, accompanied by an automatic game misconduct penalty, assessed at 13:12 of the final stanza to Christophe Lalonde. The infraction incurs a one-game suspension. McGill's PK unit now ranks third in the 20-team league with an 87.7 per cent success rate.

"Our penalty-kill was really good tonight," added Nobes. "Not only did we not get scored on but we also didn't give them many chances to score. Our PK unit played a  lot of minutes -- with Jan Kaminsky, Samuel Tremblay, Alexandre Sills and Verrier up front -- and were very effective at shutting down a pretty good power-play. The Stingers have four skilled forwards working the puck around pretty well and (Carl) Neil working the back end."

Goaltender Louis-Philip Guindon, a 6-foot-1, 183-pound science sophomore from Saint-Joseph-du-Lac, Que., turned aside 21 of 22 shots for his league-leading ninth victory in 11 decisions. He lowered his goals-against average to 2.01 and his save percentage to .931.

McGill's offence ranks fourth in the nation in goals per game (4.15), behind Alberta (5.27), Acadia (4.79) and UNB (4.31). McGill's defence also ranks fourth-best in goals-against average (1.99), trailing Alberta (1.73), UNB (1.92) and UQTR (1.98).

The bitter Redmen-Stingers rivalry resumes with a rematch on Saturday night (Nov. 18) at Concordia's Ed Meagher Arena on the west-end Loyola campus. Puck drop is 7:30 p.m.

REDMEN RAP: A trio of former Redmen made a splash in the local business community this week when Transcontinental, Inc., under the guidance of CEO François Olivier, who skated for McGill from 1985 to 1988, announced the sale of Courrier Laval -- a 71-year-old publication described as a jewel of the weekly newspaper landscape in Quebec -- to 2M Media. The acquiring company is led by younger brother and president Martin Olivier (1989-1992) as well as vice-president Martin Routhier (1993-1998).

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2017-18 OUA MEN'S HOCKEY STANDINGS
 

Rank	West	GP	W	L	OTL	PTS	PCT	GF	GA	STK	P10	PIM
1	York	12	9	3	0	18	0.750	40	31	0-1-0	7-3-0	146
2	Laurier	11	7	2	2	16	0.727	39	27	2-0-1	6-2-2	110
3	Ryerson	12	8	4	0	16	0.667	48	39	0-1-0	6-4-0	132
4	Guelph	11	7	3	1	15	0.682	44	37	5-0-0	6-3-1	124
5	Waterloo	12	5	5	2	12	0.500	40	41	1-0-0	4-4-2	258
6	Brock	11	4	4	3	11	0.500	32	33	2-0-1	4-3-3	126
7	Windsor	11	4	4	3	11	0.500	27	28	2-0-2	4-3-3	164
8	Lakehead	12	5	6	1	11	0.458	28	36	1-0-0	5-5-0	102
9	Toronto	11	4	6	1	9	0.409	22	29	1-0-1	3-6-1	104
10	Western	11	3	7	1	7	0.318	37	49	0-3-1	3-6-1	92
Rank	East	GP	W	L	OTL	PTS	PCT	GF	GA	STK	P10	PIM
1	McGill	13	11	2	0	22	0.846	54	26	5-0-0	9-1-0	217
2	Carleton	11	8	2	1	17	0.773	42	24	0-1-0	7-2-1	149
3	Concordia	11	8	2	1	17	0.773	45	30	0-1-0	7-2-1	197
4	UQTR	12	7	2	3	17	0.708	35	25	0-1-3	6-1-3	280
5	Queen's	11	5	3	3	13	0.591	35	31	1-0-0	4-3-3	142
6	Ottawa	11	5	4	2	12	0.545	41	41	1-0-1	5-4-1	140
7	UOIT	11	5	5	1	11	0.500	28	37	3-0-0	4-5-1	171
8	Nipissing	11	4	5	2	10	0.455	24	37	0-2-1	4-5-1	257
9	RMC	12	3	8	1	7	0.292	22	48	3-0-0	3-6-1	201
10	Laurentian	11	2	9	0	4	0.182	23	57	0-4-0	2-8-0	168