TORONTO, ON – Entering the final month of the OUA men’s hockey regular season, the stakes could not be higher for several teams still battling for their playoff lives and the chance to keep their Queen’s Cup dreams alive.Â
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.
READ THE LATEST OUA WOMEN’S HOCKEY TAKEAWAYS
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 his 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 University Cups, 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.
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 goalscoring with five goals each, while Roleau and Walford lead assist 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 Uruqart will have lofty goals heading a Wednesday night rivalry clash with the Concordia Stingers and a weekend matchup with the Carleton Ravens.