MONTREAL – Rookie Evan Patrician of Calgary, tallied twice to spark a late third period rally by McGill but it proved insufficient as the No. 3-ranked UQTR Patriotes potted a pair of goals in the final two minutes to escape with a 5-3 victory over McGill in OUA men's hockey at McConnell Arena, Thursday.

The Redbirds outshot UQTR 41-32 – including a 10-0 margin in the first 10 minutes of play – but fell short on special teams. It was the sixth consecutive victory for the Patriotes, who went 2-for-3 on the power-play, while McGill was 0-for-2.

Trailing 3-1 with just over three minutes left to play, McGill rallied to tie the game when Patrician and William Rouleau of St. Basile, Que., connected at 16:48 and 17:39, respectively. But it took only 50 seconds for the Pats to respond when defenceman David Noel netted the game-winner on a seeing-eye wrist shot from above the faceoff circle. Olivier Garneau added an empty-netter 19 seconds later.

"The intensity over the last five minutes are what the playoffs are like for a whole game," said McGill head coach David Urquhart. "That's the level of focus that we need to be able to sustain for an entire game so that we don't get down and have to claw back like we did tonight. We want to be on the other side of that, so we are up in the late stages of the game. That's our takeaway from this game."

After a scoreless opening period, Felix Lafrance gave the Pats a 2-0 lead on power-play goals at the 23 second mark of the middle frame and again at 4:09.

Patrician cut the deficit in half with his first of two markers at 13:16.

UQTR took a 3-1 lead at 7:29 of the final frame on a hotly-disputed goal when Vincent Milot-Ouellet appeared to kick the puck past McGill goaltender Emanuel Vella. That set the stage for the frenzied final three minutes and 12 seconds, a span that featured four goals.

Goaltender Alexis Gravel made 38 saves for the victory, improving his record to 10-1. Vella was credited with 27 saves as his record fell to 5-3.

The division-leading Patriotes improved to 14-3-0 and now sit five points ahead of second-place McGill, which dropped to 10-4-3 in the OUA East.

The result evened the season series between these bitter rivals at 2-2 with two games left to play. The Pats have a lifetime record of 170-93-17 against McGill since they first met in 1969, including a 119-61-16 mark in regular season play.

UQTR returns to Montreal on Saturday for a 3 p.m. matinee against fourth-place Concordia (11-5-0). McGill heads to Kingston on Saturday to confront RMC (5-10-1), a team that upset the Redbirds 7-6 in overtime to open the OUA season in mid-October. That game is slated for a 7 p.m. start and will be streamed for free on OUAtv.

McGill's next home hockey event will be the Winter Carnival Game on Jan. 13 against the Carleton Ravens and a sell-out is expected. Some 750 tickets in the 1,000-seat arena have already been pre-purchased by the faculty of Management and the remaining 250 tickets are now on available  online.

REDBIRDS RAP: There were a number of McGill hockey grads spotted in the crowd despite the game going head-to-head with the IIHF world junior championship, which was won by Canada, a group that featured McGill grad Lucas Madill (B.Ed '07) as part of the coaching staff, where he served as a mental performance consultant... Among the faces in the crowd were former McGill coaches Ken Tyler and Martin Raymond. Tyler, who served as bench boss from 1979 to 1988, gave an insightful second intermission interview to play-by-play man Brent Bodkin on the McGill Streaming Network. Other McGillians included Mike Nelson, Ken Covo, Dan Gubiani, Charles Gauthier, Neil Prokop, Quinn Syrydiuk and Sylvain Charbonneau.

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OUA STANDINGS & STATS
 
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SOURCE:
Earl Zukerman
Sports Information Officer
Athletics & Recreation
McGill University
514-398-7012
www.mcgillathletics.ca
earl.zukerman@mcgill.ca
@EarlZukerman (twitter)