Toronto, ON – With just under four minutes remaining in the third period of a 4-4 tie, the UQTR Patriotes’ David Noel held the puck at the top of the left circle.
Stepping forward, he wired a low wrister going glove side on McGill Redbirds’ goalie Alexis Shank, but it just skimmed by the right post. The puck looked like it might clip the boards and go wide, but instead, it slammed almost directly onto the graphic reading “2024 UNIVERSITY CUP” behind the McGill net and bounced back toward the slot.
McGill defenceman Mitchell Prowse took a desperate swing at the puck, but UQTR’s Connor Frenette, sneaking in off the right boards, grabbed it and wired it top corner above a diving Alexis Shank, 5-4 UQTR, the Patriotes advance to the National Championship.
When it reaches the semifinal Saturday in U SPORTS, there is officially no more margin for error. The four best remaining teams in the country square off with the firm reality that while all four will play on Sunday, only two will get the chance to battle for a national title and a place in history.
In the early semifinal game on Saturday, the UNB Reds’ 7-0 blowout win over the TMU Bold was simple, almost a warning. The defending national champions, to use the old quote, served a reminder that “if you come at the king, you best not miss.”
In the late game on Saturday night though, UQTR’s 5-4 win over the McGill Redbirds wasn’t so simple. It was a reminder between two bitter rivals that for most teams, history is often written on a knife’s edge. That if you want the opportunity to play for glory, you don’t necessarily have to be perfect, but you have to find a way to be better than the other guy at least one more time.
Throughout 60 minutes on Saturday, despite blowing a 3-1 lead, the Patriotes found a way to be good enough, long enough to advance. It wasn’t pretty, but for a young UQTR program, two years and many players removed from their 2022 National Championship it was enough to give the storied program another chance at glory.
The only thing standing in their way? Just a UNB Reds team in search of back-to-back national titles, and the perfect U SPORTS season.
From a 2024 Queen’s Cup win over the TMU Bold in double-overtime to Saturday’s wild semifinal win, the Patriotes haven’t been perfect but they managed to live on the edge all season. The hope is that the experience will carry them through the ultimate challenge.
If this game deserved something, it was more people to see it. As the lights went up at Mattamy Athletic Centre for puck drop just after 7 p.m., amidst the speckles of red on the north side and green and orange on the south side, was a sea of empty blue and yellow seats as just 509 people were announced in attendance, the second smallest crowd at the 2024 U CUP ahead of the 400 announced for UQTR and Moncton on Friday.
Still, from the moment the puck dropped, the two teams put on a show for those in attendance. Just eight minutes in, Zachary Gallant picked up a high-sticking call, and Charles-Antoine Dumont flew into Alexis Gravel on the forecheck to get called for goaltender interference. That gave the Patriotes the five on 3, where Simon Lafrance buried a one-timer off a tape-to-tape from his brother Felix to make it 1-0.
Barely six minutes later, Mitchell Prowse tossed a knuckler from the point that was tipped by Xavier Fortin, completely fooling Gravel to make it 1-1. Just six minutes after that though, Edouard Cournoyer threaded a seeing-eye shot past Shank to make it 2-1 for the Patriotes after a period.
The Redbirds, who fell in the OUA East Final to the Patriotes before winning the OUA Bronze Medal, knew what to expect in their ninth matchup against UQTR this season and were not perturbed down a goal.
“We’ve had a lot of adversity. We lost the first three games of the year, but we came back and finished with the most points,” Scott Walford said. We didn’t win the OUA, but we’ve been knocked down plenty of times and picked ourselves up many times.”
The Patriotes added another partway through the second as William Doumoulin’s shot snuck through Shank to make it 3-1. Just 21 seconds later, though, Alexandre Gagnon caught a pass from Mathieu Gagnon off the rush and wired a picture-perfect backhand past Alexis Gravel to cut it to 3-2.
Eight minutes later, Gagnon caught a rebound in front and buried it past Gravel for his second of the night, tying the game at 3-3.
“He’s [Gagnon] got that separation speed, and on that first goal, you saw that,” Redbirds coach David Urquhart said. “He does everything the right way; he’s one of those players as a coach; you’re super proud to have him on your team.”
Things seemed to go from bad to worse for the Patriotes as with 48 seconds left in the second, Erica Uba picked up a one-time shot of a turnover in the UQTR zone and buried it to give McGill their first lead of the night.
He watched his team’s 3-1 lead evaporate, but Patriotes coach Marc-Etienne Hubert knew this was a team prepared to deal with the challenge.
“Every game is stressful, we play overtime, we play with a short lineup,” Hubert said. “This year we only played three games this year with the full lineup, so every game was a challenge.”
That resiliency was demonstrated barely 20 seconds later as right off the draw, Charles Beaudoin found a streaking Vincent Milot-Ouellet, who shovelled it past Shank to knot the game at four heading into the second intermission.
The third period saw the teams split the shots 10-10 but it was Frenette, with four minutes to play who found the only goal of the frame, that gave the Patriotes the lead, the win and the ticket back to the national championship game.
Standing in an interior hallway of Mattamy Athletic Centre about 30 minutes post-game it was slowly sinking in for Scott Walford and Redbirds that a season filled with promise, fell short of a title in the OUA and was given a second life in the national championship was not going to see a championship banner brough back to Mcconnell Arena. That still didn’t mean there wasn’t something to play for on Sunday though.
“It’s heartbreaking we play three years for some of us, six for some so it’s a heartbreaking loss, Walford said. “But at the same time, too, it has to be the same mentality as last night where you gotta park it here before you leave the rink and get ready for the third place game because at the end of the day, you don’t want to go home empty-handed.”
For a player like Walford, Sunday marks his final game in the red and white for the Redbirds, and his last time playing with his defensive partner and best friend Mitchell Prowse, who joined him in Montréal after playing parts of three years in the WHL in Victoria with the Royals.
“You can go back farther than that. We were both at Okanagan Hockey Academy together different years and played a couple of games together, on the same bus every day for an hour from Kelowna to Penticton every day together,” Walford said.
“The guy’s my best friend; it’s tough that tomorrow is my last game with him.”
No matter if the Redbirds take a medal on Sunday, the day will be tough, but at the same time that’s what makes it feel like it mattered.
“One of the beauties about university sports is the relationships you build,” Urquhart said. One of the special things about this team is that guys come from all across the country, and they form bonds that last a lifetime.”
“We have a sports psychologist who would say it’s four for 40; you play together for four years, and it’s memories for the next 40 years of your life.”
Two years ago it was Simon Lafrance scoring the double-overtime winning goal to give the UQTR Patriotes the 5-4 win over the Alberta Golden Bears and the 2022 U SPORTS National Championship.
That 2022 team is not this team, though and the Patriotes are well aware of that.
“It’s completely different. It’s a different team, different age,” Hubert said. “At the level we had back then, we were an experienced team with a lot of veterans. Now, we have lots of rookies, and we faced a lot of adversity during the year.’
This team though, with 12 rookies, with a double overtime Queen’s Cup title and with one more crazy win under their belt now gets the ultimate test, to try and slay the unbeatable team and become part of U SPORTS history.
Multiple times in his post-game Marc-Etienne Hubert brought up one simple sentiment.
“This is one of the biggest challenges in the history of the program,”
Now it’s time to see what his team does with it.