MONTREAL – William Leblanc scored once and added a pair of assists as the UQTR Patriotes skated to a 4-1 decision over McGill on the final day of the OUA men's hockey schedule, Sunday at McConnell Arena.
 
The game was a rare morning affair, with an 11:15 a.m. start time as a result of being rescheduled from Friday's postponement due to a snowstorm that dumped more than 40 centimetres on Montreal and the surrounding areas.
 
McGill, which finished fourth in the OUA East with a 16-10-2 record,  will meet fifth-seeded Concordia (13-10-5), when they cross paths in the OUA East best-of-three quarter-final in the coming week. The series will begin on Thursday at McConnell Arena (7 pm), followed by Game 2 on Saturday at Concordia's Ed Meagher Arena (7:30 pm). If a rubber match is needed, it will be on Sunday, 7 pm at McConnell.  This will be the 15th post-season rendezvous between these teams and the first since 2018, when McGill lost the OUA East Final opener 3-1 but roared back to win 3-2 and 6-2.

UQTR finished second in the division with a 19-6-3 record. The Pats will open their playoffs against seventh-place Queen's (12-13-3). That best-of-three series is slated to start in Kingston on Wednesday. The other OUA East matchups are No.1 Carleton vs No.8 RMC and No.3 Ottawa vs No. Ontario Tech.
 
Sunday's game featured 15 minor penalties, seven of them for roughing. McGill was 0-for-4 on the power-play, while the Pats were 0-for-3.
 
After a scoreless first period, the Patriotes jumped into a 3-1 lead after the middle stanza and added an empty-netter in the final segment.  
 
Leblanc opened the scoring with his 10th goal of the season at 6:50 but winger Guillaume Gauthier knotted the score for McGill at 10:10. It was a career-high 10th of the season for the senior from Ste. Marthe sur le Lac, Que., who now owns a 49-58-107 record in 139 games overall.
 
That lasted only 33 seconds, however, as the Pats regained the advantage with a goal by Zachary Lavigne at 10:43. UQTR then upped their lead to 3-1 at 14:26 on Mathieu Boucher's fifth marker of the campaign. They added an empty-netter by Christophe Boivin in the third period.
 
McGill had a 30-26 advantage in shots. Pats netminder Sebastien Auger made 29 saves for the victory, improving to 14-9 on the season. McGill senior Louis-Philip Guindon made 22 saves as his record fell to 12-8 on the season and 56-30 in 88 career regular season games. Unless he returns for a fifth year, he will remain tied for the school win record, set eight years ago by Hubert Morin (56-15) who graduated after leading McGill to a national championship in 2012. Ranked third in the record book is 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., finished among the upper echelons of the netminding leaderboard. He posted a nation-leading .941 save percentage and a 2.22 goals against average, which ranks eighth in the country.
 
McGILL PLAYOFF MATCHUP WITH CONCORDIA: The crosstown rivals have previously met 14 times in post-season play and McGill has won 10 of the 14 series with an 18-12 record in 30 playoff games. McGill defeated Concordia in 1988, 1989, 1993, 1995, 2000, 2007, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018. The Stingers won in 1977, 1979, 1998 and 2001.
 
This season, McGill won their three-game series with Concordia, outscoring the Stingers 10-7. Excluding a pair of empty-net goals, all three encounters were one-goal decisions, with Concordia winning the first 3-2 in overtime (Oct. 5), followed by a pair of McGill victories, with a 5-2 decision in the Corey Cup game (Oct. 26) and a 3-2 overtime decision in the Winter Carnival game before a sold-out crowd at McConnell Arena.

McGill owns a 107-103-14 overall record in 224 lifetime meetings against Concordia dating back to their first confrontation in 1975.