Queen’s Golden Gaels will open their Ontario University Athletics East division hockey quarter-final series with the McGill Redmen Wednesday night in Montreal.

The best-of-three set will resume Friday night at the Memorial Centre and return to Montreal, if necessary, Sunday night.

The sixth-ranked team in Canada, McGill finished first in the division during the regular year, at 21-5. The Gaels finished fifth, 13-12-1.

Both teams had hard-fought first-round series; the Redmen needed three games to defeat eighth-place Concordia after the Stingers won the series opener at McGill’s McConnell Arena—ending an eight-game McGill winning streak. The Gaels, who also lost their series opener at home, disposed of the Laurentian Voyageurs by winning back-to-back games in Sudbury on the weekend.

Queen’s is the only East division club to knock off a team that finished ahead of it during the regular season. After enduring a six-game losing streak in January, the Gaels have won seven of their last nine; among those seven wins are five against teams who had a better record, including two against teams that were nationally ranked at the time.

The Gaels and Redmen met twice in the season, with McGill taking a 4-3 win out of Kingston on the opening night of the season and a 4-1win at home last month.

Defenceman Samuel Labrecque has been a particularly bothersome bur in the Gaels’ saddle. He had two points, including the game-winning goal with 14 seconds left in the third period of the first game, and he scored three goals in a span of seven and a half minutes in the second period, providing the margin of victory of the game in Montreal.

No doubt to the Gaels’ dismay, Labrecque, who played three seasons at Clarkson University before transferring to McGill, finished the season strong, with seven goals in his last five regular-season games, and three more in the series with Concordia.

Defenceman Patrick Downe assisted on three of the five Queen’s goals against McGill this year.

McGill has won (at least) the last 14 games against Queen’s—at least because the CIS archive only goes back to 2009-10. In that time was a two-game playoff sweep in 2012. In all, the Redmen have won four straight playoff games over the Gaels (there was also a two-game sweep in 2008).

The last time Queen’s beat McGill in the post-season was March 7, 1910, an 8-2 victory in a game played in Ottawa.