NORTH BAY, ONT -- Forward Harlan Orr scored twice and added an assist, while Louis-Philip Guindon made 43 saves and tied a school goaltending record as McGill doubled the Nipissing University Lakers 6-3 in OUA men's hockey at the Memorial Gardens, Friday.
 
The result – which happened on the 143rd anniversary of McGill's first official hockey game played on Jan. 31, 1877 – improved the team's record to 15-8-2 in OUA East standings and its record against Nipissing to 24-5 in 29 confrontations. More importantly, it clinched at least a fourth-place finish, guaranteeing home-ice advantage in the quarter-finals. McGill can still finish as high as third as the team sits only one point behind Ottawa (15-7-3) with three games left to play.
 
Guindon's improved his lifetime win-loss mark to 56-29 in 87 OUA regular season games, equaling the school win record set eight years ago by Hubert Morin (56-15) who graduated after leading McGill to a national championship in 2012. That victory gave Morin one more win than Mathieu Poitras, who posted a 54-19-6 record between 2004 and 2008. Guindon, a 6-foot-1, 188-pound master's student from St. Joseph du Lac, Que., continues to grace the upper echelons of netminding leaderboards with a nation-leading .943 save percentage and a 2.18 goals against average, which ranks seventh in the country.
 
Orr, a kinesiology senior from Lake Country, B.C., kicked things off just 76 seconds after the initial puck-drop. It was McGill's third consecutive game scoring within the opening two minutes.
 
That held until a second period offensive crescendo which exploded with seven of the contest's nine goals.
 
First, co-captain Samuel Tremblay, a senior from St. Basile le Grand, Que., doubled McGill's lead at 5:49 of the middle frame on a power-play. Less than two minutes later, Nipissing narrowed the deficit to 2-1 when freshman Mathieu Franche found the back of the net for the first time this season.

Junior forward Keanu Yamamoto's eighth goal of the campaign, an even-strength tally at 4:16, restored the two-goal cushion, assisted by linemates Orr and Ryan Penny.
 
Nipissing temporarily stunned the visitors with two quick goals -- tying the game at 3-3 –  but Orr buried his second of the game 51 seconds later off feeds from Penny and Yamamoto to put McGill back in the driver's seat.

Orr, a senior who is no relation to NHL legend Bobby Orr, was credited with the game-winner and now has tallied six goals this season after failing to find the net in each of his first three campaigns.
 
"I think Yamamoto, Penny and Orr have developed some nice chemistry in the last few weeks," noted head coach Liam Heelis of the trio that collected three of McGill's six goals and nine of their 15 points in the game. "Its great to see that show on the scoresheet tonight. Those guys also did a good job creating space for themselves in the slot area and net front. And they were rewarded for that."
 
Rounding out the McGill scoring was Antoine Dufort-Plante late in the second to make it 5-3 and a red-hot Christophe Lalonde who closed out the scoring with a shorthanded goal mid-way through the final period – his fourth marker in three games and team-leading 11th of the season.
 
"Lalonde earns his points one way," said Heelis of the industrial relations senior who now has struck for 51 career goals in 111 regular season contests. "By outworking and being relentless, the pucks are starting to fall for him and it's the right time of the year."
 
While McGill was 1-for-4 on the power-play, it also showcased its stellar penalty-killing. The PK unit convincingly shut down all four Nipissing man-advantage situations, including a key third period kill on a Blake Hayward hooking infraction while holding on to a 5-3 lead. Halfway through that penalty, Lalonde connected for his killer goal, the team's fourth shorty of the campaign. The McGillians now boast a league-leading 89.3 per cent success rate on the PK, having only conceded a dozen PP markers in 25 games.
 
Nipissing starter Talor Joseph made 17 saves on 22 shots between the pipes and saw his record fall to 4-12. He logged only 40 minutes of action before rookie Francis Asselin relieved him of his duties for the final period, and allowed one goal on eight volleys fired his way.
 
Despite the somewhat lopsided score, the shots were 46-30 in favour of the Lakers, including an 18-12 barrage in the second period.
 
"Our objective is to minimize high-quality scoring chances, not necessarily shots against," noted Heelis of the sometimes misleading statistic. "I think we've done a good job with that. And our guys have a lot of trust instilled in our goaltender. 'LP' does a great job for us, night in and night out. He has all season. We want to continue to see our defence do a solid job protecting the dangerous areas for them."
 
With the regular season barreling towards its conclusion, both sides play again in less than 24 hours. McGill (15-8-2) will remain in northwestern Ontario to visit 10th-place Laurentian (5-17-2) in Sudbury on Saturday (Feb 1). Nipissing (7-16-3) hosts another Quebec-based team in Concordia (11-10-5), which visits North Bay for another evening tilt. The post-season is slated to begin on Feb. 12.
 
SCORING SUMMARY

OUA SCOREBOARD

OUA STANDINGS & STATS