In Lakehead’s first road test of the OUA regular season, the Thunderwolves were defeated 8-1 by the defending league champion McGill Redmen at the McConnell Arena in Montreal on Friday night.
The Wolves played short-handed for six minutes in the first period, but some timely saves by starting netminder Nic Renyard kept Lakehead in the game early on.
Jordan Fournier got McGill on the board with 2:21 remaining in the opening period when he finished off a give-and-go from the slot.
Lakehead tied the game 3:28 into the second when Caleb Boman fired a laser through the wickets of McGill goalie Louis-Philip Guindon off a nice set-up by Jordan King.
That turned out to be the high point of the game for the Thunderwolves, as the Redmen exploded for five straight goals in the middle stanza.
Nicolas Poulin scored from the side of net after his shot from along the goal line took a strange bounce off Renyard and into the cage at 4:24.
Christoph Lalonde stormed down the right wing and cut toward the middle to beat Renyard with a forehand deke at 7:27, and then after a Lakehead turnover a minute later, Jasmin Boutet went top shelf from the slot to increase McGill’s lead to 4-1.
Lalonde added another from a sharp angle at 12:41, and a slap shot by Nikolas Brouillard at 17:23 gave McGill a 6-1 lead after 40 minutes.
Devin Green replaced Renyard in the Wolves’ goal to start the third and faced the same type of pressure that Renyard did during the first two periods.
Jerome Verrier took a pass from behind the Lakehead net and beat Green high on the glove side at 6:14, and Dominic Talbot-Tassi converted from close range when he slid a backhander underneath Green’s pad at 13:47 to round out the scoring.
Total shots on goal in the game were 49-42 for McGill, but the Redmen had more quality scoring opportunities.
For the night, Lakehead went 0-for-1 on the power play while McGill was 1-for-7.
The Thunderwolves will try to regroup in the Saturday rematch, with the opening face-off set for 7:00 p.m.