TROIS-RIVIERES, Que. -- Jerome Verrier of Drummondville, Que., tallied twice, including the winner, as the No.4 ranked McGill University Redmen celebrated their 141st birthday with a 4-3 road victory over UQTR in OUA men's hockey at Le Colisee, Wednesday.

McGill, which played their first game way back on Jan. 31, 1877, now sits atop the OUA East with a 21-4-1 record and two games remaining on their schedule. More importantly, the Redmen have clinched a second straight OUA East pennant, their third in four seasons and fifth in eight years for head coach Kelly Nobes.

"It wasn't our best game but we were playing a desperate team that is fighting to make the playoffs and we found a way to win," said Nobes, who improved his record to 230-99-3 in 332 games overall behind the McGill bench and 370-267-14 in 651 contests, including stints at RMC and Laurier.

The Redmen, who outshot UQTR 40-29, led 2-1 after the opening period but found themselves knotted at 3-3 heading into the final stanza. The Patriotes, who tumbled to 8-17-1 with two games remaining -- and recently forfeited 19 points in the OUA East standings -- sit precariously perched in the eighth and final playoff berth. They are only one point ahead of RMC (6-14-4) and two ahead of Laurentian (7-16-1) but both of those teams have four contests remaining.

Verrier, a 5-foot-11, 185-pound centre, put McGill ahead 2-1 at 14:10 of the first period and snapped a 3-3 deadlock with the winning marker at 15:14 of the third period. The 23-year-old economics junior now has a dozen goals and 27 points in 26 contests to entrench his second-place standing in the OUA scoring race.

"Jerome had a solid game," Nobes noted. "He scored a nice one on a semi-breakaway, then stuffed one on a second-chance rebound."

The other McGill markers came from rookies Michael Cramarossa of Markham, Ont., and sophomore Antoine Dufort-Plante of Montreal. Both of them now have seven goals on the season.

Cramarossa put his side up 1-0 only 2:55 after the opening puck drop, while Dufour-Plante gave McGill a short-lived 3-2 lead at 8:52 of the middle stanza.

Marksmen for the Pats, who tied the game at 1-1, 2-2 and 3-3, were Mathieu Lemay (11th), Christophe Boivin (16th) and team captain Pierre-Maxime Poudrier (10th), respectively.

Goaltender Louis-Philippe Guindon, a kinesiology sophomore from St. Joseph du Lac, Que., registered 26 saves and improved his record to 18-5. He leads all U SPORTS goalies in wins and shares the lead in shutouts (3), to go along with a 2.19 goals-against average and a .918 save percentage.

Pats sophomore Alexandre Belanger was beaten four times on 40 shots and took the loss as his record fell to 6-4.

The Redmen went 0-for-4 on the power-play and killed off four of five penalties. McGill's PK unit continues to lead the league and rank second in the nation with a stingy 88.9 per cent success rate behind StFX (91.9).

McGill won four of their five meetings with the Pats this season, including one via forfeit, and now owns a lifetime record of 85-158-17 in 260 meetings overall since this bitter rivalry began in 1969. If the season ended today, they would meet each other in the first-round of playoffs for the 21st post-season series against each other.

The Redmen close out their regular season schedule with road games at UOIT (14-9-1) in Oshawa (Feb. 3 at 7:30 pm), and at Concordia (15-6-3) in the annual Ronald Corey Cup encounter on Feb. 9 (at 7 pm).

REDMEN RAP: High-scoring defenceman Nikolas Brouillard finally made his long-awaited debut in a McGill uniform,  wore #16 and merited an assist on the team's third goal. The 5-foot-11, 168-pounder has been practicing with the team all season but was not eligible to play until sitting a year from his last pro game with Orlando of the ECHL. Brouillard, a 22-year-old native of St. Hyacinthe, Que., had a prolific career in the QMJHL, where he registered a 62-197-259 record in 312 regular season games with Drummondville, Quebec and Rouyn-Noranda... McGill leads the 20-team OUA with a winning percentage of .808. It ranks as the second-best in the country, next to Alberta (.833)... McGill is ranked first in the country in shorthanded goals (8), second in shots per game (40.3), fifth in goals per game (4.04) and fourth in goals-against average (2.26)... The Redmen have now posted 24th first-place finishes since the first Canadian university hockey league was formed in 1902-03. McGill's pre-war pennants occurred in 1903, 1905, 1910, 1912, 1920, 1927, 1930, 1931, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939 and 1940. In the post-war era, the Redmen finished atop the league standings in 1946, 1947, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2018.

LINK TO BOXSCORE



2017-18 OUA MEN'S HOCKEY STANDINGS
(28-game schedule)
 

Rank	OUA East	GP	W	L	OTL	PTS	PCT	GF	GA	STK	P10	PIM
1	McGill	26	21	4	1	43	0.827	105	59	4-0-1	8-1-1	371
2	Queen's	24	16	5	3	35	0.729	76	55	4-0-0	8-2-0	278
3	Carleton	24	15	6	3	33	0.688	86	63	0-1-0	6-3-1	396
4	Concordia	24	15	6	3	33	0.688	98	74	0-2-0	5-4-1	426
5	UOIT	24	14	9	1	29	0.604	67	65	1-0-0	6-4-0	344
6	Ottawa	24	12	8	4	28	0.583	80	83	1-0-0	4-4-2	282
7	Nipissing	24	9	13	2	20	0.400	61	81	0-1-0	2-8-0	459
8	UQTR	26	8	17	1	17	0.327	83	73	0-2-0	6-4-0	460
9	RMC	24	6	14	4	16	0.333	54	93	1-0-1	2-6-2	405
10	Laurentian	24	7	16	1	15	0.288	60	122	0-1-0	3-6-1	369
Rank	OUA West	GP	W	L	OTL	PTS	PCT	GF	GA	STK	P10	PIM
1	Guelph	24	18	5	1	37	0.771	103	71	2-0-0	8-2-0	288
2	York	25	16	8	1	33	0.660	81	70	4-0-0	6-4-0	292
3	Ryerson	24	14	7	3	31	0.646	96	76	1-0-1	5-3-2	250
4	Laurier	24	13	8	3	29	0.604	81	72	0-3-1	4-5-1	246
5	Brock	24	12	7	5	29	0.604	67	63	1-0-1	6-2-2	277
6	Western	24	12	9	3	27	0.563	87	81	8-0-1	8-1-1	188
7	Lakehead	23	10	9	4	24	0.480	54	76	0-3-3	2-5-3	232
8	Windsor	24	7	10	7	21	0.438	65	82	1-0-1	2-5-3	400
9	Toronto	24	9	14	1	19	0.396	63	82	1-0-0	5-5-0	331
10	Waterloo	24	8	13	3	19	0.396	71	97	0-1-0	3-6-1	491

NOTE: UQTR forfeited 8 wins and 3 OT losses (19 pts) for using an ineligible player. The teams that benefited are: Lakehead (4 pts), Laurentian (4), Nipissing (3), Carleton (2), Queen's (2).