By Keiran Gorsky
The Concordia Stingers won their first-ever Queen’s Cup Championship, casting aside the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold 4-1 on Saturday evening at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.
The result marked the Bold’s second consecutive defeat in the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) finals.
“Concordia is a hell of a team,” said TMU head coach Johnny Duco. “You’re trying to get ready all season to play in these big games and when you get there, the margin for error is pretty much zero.”
The game opened with a decidedly confrontational energy, a short shoving match starting up after all of 90 seconds of play. The Bold did well to stay out of the penalty box for the opening of the first frame, with Concordia casually zipping the puck around TMU’s zone with deft cycle play.
Third-year forward Édouard Charron nearly opened the scoring five minutes in, but third-year goaltender Kai Edmonds splayed out spread-eagle to stop him. A runaway puck five minutes later landed on third-year forward Nicholas Girouard’s stick, forcing Edmonds to save the day a second time.
As the period drew on, the home team’s physical edge seemed to give way to frustration. Second-year defenceman Jaden Raad took the first minor penalty of the game with seven minutes remaining in the period. It didn’t take long for Girouard—towering at 6-foot-3—to plant himself in front of the net on the powerplay, tipping the puck past Edmonds to grab the lead for the Stingers.
The floodgates flew open from there. First-year forward Alex Gaudio doubled up just a minute later, capitalizing off one of several Bold defensive breakdowns that plagued them for the rest of the period. Edmonds fumbled a dump-in on net as the Bold lost track of a streaking Gaudio, who whacked a loose puck in.
“We feel strongly [Edmonds is] the best goalie in the country,” Duco said. “We’ve got to do a better job in front of him, box out and pick guys up.”
The first period’s chippiness dissipated into a lower-event second frame. An early Bold powerplay summed up TMU’s shoddy offensive generation on the night, as an aggressive Concordia penalty kill forced a series of mishaps that saw the Bold inadvertently play the puck out from the offensive zone.
Bold zone entries were immediately thwarted at the opponent’s blue line. Third-year defenceman Jaden Condotta was even forced to break up a Concordia 3-on-1 at the end of the man advantage.
What chances TMU had were confined to relative hail marys from the high slot. Fourth-year forward and captain Chris Playfair had a wrist shot swiped away by second-year Concordia goaltender Nikolas Hurtubise, the Stingers more than content to concede shots from 15 feet away.
A second Bold powerplay towards the end of the period turned farcical as multiple Bold players fanned on consecutive one-timers.
Concordia players converged around the TMU goal to rub more salt into the wound at the end of the Bold’s faltering power play. It took more flailing heroics from Edmonds, who was presented a second-team OUA all star before the game, to keep the game 2-0. The Bold held a narrow 23-19 lead in shots after 40 minutes.
The game plan from Duco, up to this point, surely wasn’t working.
“We had to push,” Duco said. “We knew they were gonna sit back…[Concordia] are one of the best, if not the best defensive team in the country.”
They poured pucks on net in the third period as the Stingers retreated into a defensive shell. The visitors took four penalties in the final period, conceding a whopping seven powerplays over the course of the game. The Bold struggled to convert on the man advantage all post-season long, scoring just three times on 26 power plays.
“We’ve got to be a lot sharper than that. It all comes down to lack of execution on the powerplay,” Duco said.
In perhaps the Bold’s best chance of the game up to that point, third-year forward Ian Martin found Playfair dashing to the crease, who could only scoop the puck into Hurtubise’s chest. As the pressure piled on, Stingers head coach Marc-André Element elected to call a timeout.
With 1:28 left on the clock, Playfair finally found himself open on the powerplay. Falling on one knee, he ripped a shot low along the ice to solve Hurtubise at long last. It was the only goal he conceded on 36 shots, but it closed the margin to a single goal.
“We were working our asses off to get it back…but tonight it wasn’t enough,” Playfair said.
The Bold, searching to tie the game up, pulled Edmonds out of the net in the final minutes of play, bringing a sixth skater to the ice.
The Stingers capitalized on this and extended their advantage, as third-year Stingers defender Sean Lachorelle quickly quashed any overtime prospects, flipping the puck into an empty net with 36 seconds remaining. First-year forward Alexandre Nadeau added a fourth before the final buzzer.
“I’ve won cups in the past, and I told my team the feeling of winning is one of the best feelings you’ll ever have in your whole hockey career,” said first-year Stingers forward Daniel Agostino, who won two Gilles-Courteau Trophies during his time in the Quebec Maritime Junior Hockey League. “So I was playing for every single person that’s never won.”
For the Bold, though their season at the MAC has wrapped up, their journey isn’t over. In winning the OUA West by beating the University of Toronto Varsity Blues in a three-game semi-final series, the Bold qualified for the 2025 U Sports University Cup, hosted by the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees.
“Watching another team hoist the trophy [we’ve] worked the last seven months for certainly stings,” said Duco. “You don’t want to pour it on, but there obviously needs to be accountability…you obviously need to execute at a much higher level than we did tonight.”
UP NEXT: The Bold will travel to Ottawa for the U Sports national championship, where they will face the best teams in the country at TD Place.
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