A goal by Kelly Jackson in the fourth minute of sudden-death overtime gave the Queen’s Golden Gaels a 2-1 victory over the Laurentian Voyageurs Sunday night in the deciding game of their first-round Ontario University Athletics hockey playoff series.
After losing the first game of the East division quarter-final series at home, the Gaels won the next two games in Sudbury.
As the lowest-ranked survivor of the first round, the Gaels earn a second-round date with the regular-season champion McGill Redmen, who disposed of the Concordia Stingers Sunday with a 6-3 win as they, too, prevailed after dropping the first game of the series.
In their game Sunday, the Gaels gave up a power-play goal to Vincent Liorca in the middle of the first period. Relatively speaking, they paid a small price for a spate of penalties that could have doomed them, as they took three minors in the first seven and a half minutes of the game, and played four of the first 10 minutes of the contest shorthanded, 1:53 of it two men short.
Jackson, the fifth-year Gael from Scarborough, assisted on the game-tying goal by Corey Bureau early in the second period and after a scoreless third, in which the Gaels outshot Laurentian 9-7, Jackson scored his second goal of the series at 3:06 of overtime to win it.
Kris Grant assisted on both Queen’s goals,
Queen’s outshot the Voyageurs 4-2 in the extra period.
Queen’s goaltender Kevin Bailie made 35 saves, as Laurentian outshot the Gaels 36-30. The Voyageurs took 27 shots on the Gaels’ goal in the first two periods.
In three games, Bailie, last year’s national rookie of the year, allowed just four goals.
The Gaels, who won four of their last five regular-season games, have now won six of their last eight overall.
Queen's lost both of its regular-season games with McGill, 4-3 at home on the opening night of the season, and 4-1 in Montreal in late January.