MONTREAL – Goaltender Alexis Shank posted a 44-save shutout and rookie Charles-Antoine Dumont scored the winning goal as McGill blanked No.8 ranked Concordia 1-0 in an OUA men's hockey thriller at McConnell Arena, Thursday.
 
It was the fourth consecutive win for McGill, which improved to 9-3-1 and moved into sole possession of third place in the OUA East, one point ahead of Concordia (8-4-2).
 
The Stingers, who had a lopsided 44-21 edge in shots, could not solve Shank. The 5-foot-11, 182-pound native of Laval, Que., earned his third career goose-egg and broke the school record for most saves in a shutout, held by Jacob Gervais-Chouinard, who had 41 stops in a 3-0 victory over UQTR on Oct. 19, 2013.

"It was a great performance by Shank, he was sharp right from the start and gave us a chance to win," said McGill head coach David Urquhart, whose troops were outshot 22-6 in the opening period. "He performed at the top of his game when others weren't and it allowed us to come back after a slow start. When a goalie's playing like that, it gives everybody else confidence."
 
Shank, a 23-year-old economics junior who starred for Chicoutimi in the QMJHL, improved to 7-3 on the season and lowered his goals-against average to 2.82 with a .903 save percentage. His previous best single-game save totals included 41 stops in a 1-0 preseason loss to Concordia on Oct. 23, 2021 and 40 in a 4-0 loss to Ottawa on Nov. 6, 2021.
 
Dumont's winning tally occurred at 16:28 of the second period. The 21-year-old right winger from Levis, Que., converted a pass from William Poirier, who had pounced on a dump-in from defenceman Nicolas Pavan. It was the fourth goal of the regular season for Dumont, who has nine points in 13 OUA contests.
 
The match-up featured two of the least penalized teams in the 19-team OUA and the game had eight penalties, seven of them called on the Redbirds. One of those infractions was a major and automatic game misconduct for charging, assessed against Brandon Frattaroli, the team's second-leading scorer, who will have to serve a one-game suspension.
 
The Redbirds went 0-for-1 on the power-play and killed off all four shorthanded situations, including the five-minute major. The McGill PK unit has now erased 43 of 49 shorthanded situations and ranks third in the OUA with an 87.8 per cent success rate. The Redbirds power-play continues to lead the OUA and is operating at a 34.0 per cent clip, with 18 goals on 53 chances.

"A lot of guys sacrificed their bodies blocking shots tonight, especially on the penalty-kill unit," Urquhart noted. "We took a lot of pucks in hard areas and it hurts but that's what it takes to win and we earned every inch of that victory... We faced a lot of adversity. We were short a (key) player for a lot of the game and the guys just found a way. It wasn't pretty by any stretch of the imagination but when you're up by a goal, sometimes you just have to hang on and that's what we did."
 
Stingers rookie netminder Nikolas Hurtubise made 20 saves in a losing cause as his record fell to 5-3.
 
The last time that McGill won by a 1-0 score was a conquest over Carleton on Feb. 26, 2022. This was the second 1-0 result ever played between these cross-town rivals dating back to the series debut in 1975, a span of 242 games. The previous one was an exhibition victory for Concordia on Oct. 23, 2021. McGill has won two of three meetings with Concordia this season, including a non-conference victory, and the all-time head-to-head record now sits deadlocked at 114-114-14.
 
McGill will head out on Friday for a 12-hour odyssey to Thunder Bay, Ont., where they will board two airplanes and two busses before confronting the Lakehead University Thunderwolves at Fort William Gardens on Saturday at 7 p.m. Lakehead sits fourth of 10 teams in the OUA West with a 7-5-1 record. This will be the first time that these teams have crossed paths since a 7-5 Thunderbirds victory at McConnell Arena on Oct. 20, 2018. McGill's lifetime record against Lakehead is 7-8-1.
 
SCORING SUMMARY
 
OUA STATS & STANDINGS
 
SOURCE:
Earl Zukerman
Sports Information Officer
McGill University Athletics & Recreation
514-983-7012 (cell)
www.mcgillathletics.ca
earl.zukerman@mcgill.ca