MONTREAL -- Rookie Charles Tremblay of St. Felicien, Que., scored once and added a pair of assists as Concordia took advantage of numerous penalties en route to a key 7-4 road victory over McGill in OUA men's hockey at McConnell Arena, Tuesday.

It was the first game for either team since a 72-day hiatus due to exams, holidays and coronavirus restrictions. The fifth-place Redbirds fell to 2-8 with eight games remaining in the regular season. McGill sits seven points in arrears of Concordia, which improved to 5-3-1 with a game in hand and moved up four spots into a first-place tie with Ottawa.

McGill took 40 of 64 penalty minutes and the Stingers power-play appeared to be in mid-season form with a 4-for-7 performance. The Redbirds countered with a 2-for-4 effort during their the man-advantage situations.

Concordia outshot McGill 43-21, including a lopsided 19-3 edge in the first period. The Stingers led 3-1 after the opening stanza and 5-3 after two. The Redbirds pushed back, narrowing the gap to 5-4 in the third period when junior Blake Hayward of Vancouver, B.C., struck paydirt at 7:10. But it only took 80 seconds before Tremblay replied for Concordia on the power-play to restore a two-goal cushion. Then Isiah Campbell of Pierrefonds, Que., put the game out of reach with his fifth goal of the season at 16:05.

"We shot ourselves in the foot with all those penalties," said McGill head coach David Urquhart. "We battled hard to get back in that game, to make it 5-4, and we were right there, had them on the ropes. But we kept putting ourselves in the penalty-box in tough situations against a team that had already scored a couple on the power play earlier. You don't want to put yourself in that situation. But these are things that we can control going forward. We need to avoid putting ourselves in those scenarios, where we keep putting ourselves down a man, exhausting our penalty-killers and not being able to use our whole bench."

Rounding out the scoring for the visitors was defenceman Nathan Lavoie of Levis, Que., along with forwards Paycen Bjorklund  of Grande Prairie, Alta., Phelix Martineau of Terrebonne, Que., Jeffrey Durocher of Ste. Agathe, Que., and Tyler Hylland of Mercier, Que.

Four different players connected for McGill, including rookie blue-liner Mitchell Prowse of Kelowna, B.C., and freshman forward Olivier Mathieu, a native of Drummondville, who both tallied their first collegiate goal. The other McGill marksman was Keanu Yamamoto, a senior from Spokane, Wash.

Rookie netminder Jacob Delorme of Drummondville, Que., collected his first career victory for the Stingers. He saved 17 of 21 shots. McGill starter Alexis Shank, a freshman from Laval, Que., started and was pegged with the loss. He made 21 saves on 26 shots before being relieved at the 10-minute mark of the middle period. Third-year goalie Emanuel Vella of Toronto, played the remainder of the way and turned aside 15 of 17 shots.

"It was a starting point for us, coming back after a long layoff and we were reminded that it's really hard to win games in this league, this year especially," added Urquhart. "The only way to do that is playing a more disciplined game. And that's disciplined in both structure and staying out of the box. That's what we need to do."

This was the seventh and final scheduled game-between the cross-town rivals this season, with Concordia taking the series 4-3. McGill holds a slim 111-109-14 record in 234 lifetime meetings with the Stingers, including a 59-48-7 tally at McConnell Arena and an 86-81-13 mark in 180 regular season play.

The new OUA playoff format, implemented for this COVID-shortened season only, has the top three teams in each of the four divisions qualifying. Then the next two best teams in each of the two conferences (i.e East and West) will also qualify, based on winning percentage.

McGill (2-8-0) will have four days to regroup before heading the the nation's capital on Sunday to meet the division-leading Ottawa Gee-Gees (5-2-1) in a 4 p.m. start that will be streamed free on OUA-TV.

REDBIRDS RAP:  McGill team captain Samuel Tremblay continues his rehab from a lower-body injury suffered in the team's final preseason game on Oct. 30.  He has missed all 10 league games to date... Junior Dalton Gally, a 6-foot-5, 227-pound defenceman, has left the team to accept a pro offer. The 24-year-old native of San Antonio, Texas, signed a contract with the ECHL's Florida Everblades, an NHL affiliate of the Nashvillle Predators. Gally, who had four assists and 20 PIMs in 13 games overall this season, is the 92nd player in team history to ink a pro pact... Former McGill all-star goaltender Louis-Philip Guindon, who had been loaned to the AHL's Laval Rocket from Wheeling of the ECHL, was released today (Feb. 15). In three appearances with Laval, he posted a 1-1 record with a 3.60 goals-against average and an .884 save percentage. The move was made on Feb. 15, after the Montreal Canadiens signed G Andrew Hammond and demoted G Cayden Primeau to Laval.

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SOURCE:
Earl Zukerman
Sports Information Officer
Athletics & Recreation
McGill University
514-398-7012 (Off.)
m.athletics.mcgill.ca (mobile website)
www.mcgillathletics.ca
earl.zukerman@mcgill.ca