Lions pounce to take playoff position and other takeaways from OUA hockey

Toronto, Ont. (via 49 Sports / Ben Steiner / Thomas Hewitt) - Entering the final few weeks of the OUA men’s and women’s hockey regular season, the stakes could not be higher for the several teams still battling for their playoff lives and the chance to keep their Queen’s Cup and McCaw Cup dreams intact.

With some schools playing their way back into playoff contention late in the schedule and others relying on special teams for success, 49 Sports looks at what we learned this week in OUA hockey.

WHKY: A big week for the Lions vaults them into a playoff spot

The York Lions have gone without a playoff berth in women’s hockey over the last three seasons. That same fate is not sealed for this year, but going into last week, there was only an outside chance they could qualify for the McCaw Cup playoffs. But they proved that an outside chance is all they need to conjure up some spirited performances.

An unusual weekday morning game at Toronto saw the Varsity Blues, second in the OUA East, pepper goalkeeper Emma Wedgewood with 31 shots while allowing ten fewer. York knew the task would be difficult, as Toronto deploys many potent scorers. They managed to hold on, but were down a goal in the third period.

Therein, Alexa Giantsopoulos and Sydney Paulson made sure the efforts weren’t put to waste, with both scoring while engineering one of the quickest - and most shocking - turnarounds in the OUA this season. York’s efficient passing leading up to those goals stunned the Blues.

Even better for the Lions, a five-star performance later in the week was also on the cards. Giantsopoulos came up with another goal, Kaitlin Teixeira scored twice (she assisted Paulson’s winner versus Toronto), and Wedgewood stopped all 27 shots as York blanked Windsor for back-to-back wins.

They now sit fourth in the OUA East, level on points with Ontario Tech.

WHKY: Guelph beats Nipissing in a clash of the titans

This season of women’s hockey hasn’t featured dramatic races for each division, but rather one team running away with first place in both groups.

The East boasts the Nipissing Lakers. The West is the Guelph Gryphons’ playground. And when the two met on January 26th, it was the latter who was superior. A close contest came down to overtime, where Katherine Heard secured the win with a mere two seconds to go on the clock.

Even though the extra frame decided the game, Guelph acted as the tone-setter. Katelyn Dance scored in the first period, silencing the Lakers’ arena. The Gryphons chose not to let up from then on. They pressed heavily, and Nipissing was lucky to have not broken twice early on. Credit must be given to goaltender Chantelle Sandquist, who denied Guelph 36 times on the night. The offensive control was brilliant from the visiting squad, who conceded shots here and there, but certainly not at the quantity they were producing opportunities.

As members of opposite divisions, the only potential playoff matchup for this pair is the final, should they both remain atop their respective groups. It’s crucial to remember that the McCaw Cup is, ultimately, decided by a single game. Guelph has shown they can exhibit dominance over weeks and months (they currently hold a 12-game winning streak) and fend off difficult opponents in single games, like the Nipissing encounter.

Regardless of how the final five games go, Guelph will enter the playoffs as a McCaw Cup favourite.

MHKY: TMU Bold benefiting from Russian duo

Although the pair may be younger than most U SPORTS and OUA men's hockey players, the Moscow duo of Danil Grigorev and Artem Duda hit a vein of form in the latest round of OUA action.

Grigorev, who had struggled with his size in the first half of the season, has looked like a reinvented player since the resumption of play and posted his first OUA hat-trick in a 3-2 win over the Nipissing Lakers on Saturday.

Meanwhile, his Russian counterpart and longtime teammate Duda, a prospect of the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, found the back of the net for the first time in the OUA, scoring his first competitive goal in a 4-3 win, nearly a full year since last playing in the Russian junior leagues.

Although TMU looked shaky at times in transition and are in the middle of the table in terms of goal differential at +26, getting the Russian youngsters going is critical to their hopes of a run at the Queen’s Cup, and this weekend showed the quality they can bring.

The Bold take on the Western Mustangs on Wednesday before facing the Guelph Gryphons on Sunday, two teams outside of the playoff picture in their respective divisions.

MHKY: McGill special teams are lofting the Redbirds

The McGill Redbirds have only walked away from a game without a point once since the calendar flipped to 2024 and grabbed another two wins in the latest round of action. Yet, while their five-on-five play has been among the best, their astounding powerplay efficiency has been the difference-maker.

With a powerplay unit quarterbacked by blueliner Scott Walford and aided by William Rouleau and Brandon Frattaroli, the Redbirds have scored 28 times on 86-man advantage opportunities through the season, good for a 32-percent success rate.

Frattaroli and Eric Uba lead powerplay goal-scoring with five each, while Rouleau and Walford lead assists on the advantage, with 11 and nine respectively.

At the same time, they’ve only conceded one shorthanded goal, and have the OUA’s best penalty kill, clicking along at over 90 percent. In their last two games, wins over the York Lions and Ontario Tech Ridgebacks, they scored on two of four powerplays while killing a combined six penalties.

With special teams operating at a rate leaps and bounds higher than their OUA counterparts, head coach David Urquart will have lofty goals heading into a Wednesday night rivalry clash with the Concordia Stingers and a weekend matchup with the Carleton Ravens.