KINGSTON, Ont. - The No.9 nationally-ranked Queen's Gaels who finished as the second seed in the OUA East will take on the third-seeded Concordia Stingers in the OUA East semifinal this week.
Game one goes Wednesday night at 7:30 pm at the Kingston Memorial Centre while game two is at Concordia in Montreal on Friday night at 7:00 pm. Should the series go the distance, game three will be Sunday afternoon at 2:30 pm in Kingston. All games can be seen live on OUA.tv and tickets for the Gaels home games are available at gogaelsgo.com/tickets.
The two teams met twice during the regular season, and Concordia came out on top in each game. First, it was an overtime victory in Kingston 4-3 in October, and then the two teams met in Montreal where the Stingers handled the Gaels 4-2 this past January. Anthony Beauregard finished with a goal and an assist in each of the games for Concordia while the Gaels
Eric Ming had one goal and three assists across the two contests.
HOW THEY GOT HERE
The Gaels took care of business in the opening round of playoffs as they swept Nipissing 2-0. It took overtime to take game one on the road where
Alex Stothart was the hero. At home, for game two the Gaels took care of business taking down the Lakers 6-1.
Luke Edwards leads the Gaels in scoring so far this postseason with a goal and three assists.
For Concordia, they were also able to sweep their opening round series against the sixth-seed UOIT Ridgebacks. After taking the opening game at UOIT 4-1, the Stingers sealed the series in overtime of game two when Philippe Hudon scored the winner. Hudon finished the series with two goals and two helpers to lead the Stingers offensively.
STINGER OFFENCE VS GAELS DEFENCE
Anthony Beauregard led the OUA in scoring by a wide margin this season finishing with 60 points which were 19 more than the second place competitor. The Gaels leading scorer was
Slater Doggett who had 33 points on the season.
Riding shotgun with Beauregard all season were Massimo Carozza who was third in the OUA points race with 35 and Carl Neill who added 31 points for Concordia.
The difference for the Gaels all season has been their defence as they finished with the third best goals against average in the OUA. A big reason for that has been their goaltending, and veteran
Kevin Bailie was able to shutout the Stingers in game three of the series last year on the road.Â
Bailie boasts a career OUA playoff GAA of 1.89 across 24 games and has won 14 games.
RE-MATCH OF 2017
The two teams also met in last years playoffs where the Gaels were able to take the series in three games as the road team won every game. Queen's started off with a 3-1 win at Concordia, but the Stingers fired right back with a 2-0 win in Kingston. The Gaels hung on for a 2-0 win of their own in Montreal to close out the series and advance to the East final.
SPECIAL TEAMS
Queen's scored 21 powerplay goals this season ranking sixth in the OUA with a 20% efficiency, on the penalty kill they were the ninth-ranked team with an 82.4% margin.
Concordia finished as the 12th ranked powerplay unit scoring 28 goals on the season to a tune of 16.3%. While on the penalty kill they finished with an 81% efficiency which ranked 12th best in the OUA.Â
