Queen’s Golden Gaels will open their Ontario University Athletics men's hockey playoff series with the Laurentian Voyageurs Wednesday night at the Memorial Centre.

Game time is 7:30.

The best-of-three East division quarter-final series moves to Sudbury for games Saturday night and Sunday, at a time to be determined, if necessary.

The teams split their regular-season contests, each winning on the road: Laurentian, 3-1, in Kingston on the final game before the Christmas break; and Queen’s, 4-1, in Sudbury, two weeks ago.

For Queen’s, those games both marked pivotal points in the season. The first launched the Gaels, 8-6 at the time, on a six-game losing streak; the second was an important part of their late-season revival, one that got them back in the hunt for fourth place, which would have given them home-ice advantage for this series.

Though that quest fell short, the Gaels played impressively down the stretch. They closed the season with wins in five of their last six games, two of them against teams that were nationally ranked at the time: Waterloo and Trois-Rivieres.

Laurentian was similarly impressive in the closing weekend. With the Gaels nipping at their heels for fourth place, the Voyageurs, just 3-4 since the beginning of January, won their last two games, one of them a 1-0 shootout win over ninth-ranked Carleton.

The other East division series will pit Concordia, 8-17-1, against first-place McGill, 21-5; Ontario Tech, 10-15-1, against second-place Carleton, 20-5-1, and Nipissing, 12-12-2, against Trois-Rivieres, 19-4-3.

As it turned out, the loss to Queen’s on their penultimate game of the season cost the Patriotes first place.

All four series will commence on Wednesday night.

Rookie Darcy Greenaway has led the Gaels offensively in their resurgence. He has eight goals in his last eight games, including a pair of three-goal performances, at Brock and at home in a comeback victory over Ontario Tech. Greenaway finished the season with 16 goals, tied for seventh overall in Canada and tops among first-year players.

The Voyageurs come to town with two familiar faces in the lineup: Brian Nanne, who scored the game-winning shootout goal in Saturday’s game with Carleton, and Graham Yeo, who both played junior hockey with the Kingston Voyageurs.