As part of my role as team statistician for the Sudbury Wolves, my job description includes the preparation of weekly media notes, featuring various tidbits of information regarding upcoming games.

While these notes have generally been confined to circulating among media types and club officials, it seemed likely that fans of the local OHL team might also have an interest in the odds and ends that I might come across on a weekly basis.

PUTTING THE BRAKES ON A SKID
The Sudbury Wolves are entering this two game weekend looking to snap a three game losing skid that was extended following a 7-4 setback in Sault Ste Marie Wednesday night. Through their opening 15 games of the 2023-2024 season, the Wolves had not yet lost back to back games.

PAYBACK FOR THE PETES
Facing Peterborough at home for the first time since the Petes eliminated the Wolves in four straight on April 5th last spring, Sudbury will have plenty of motivation to even the score – not the least of which is a total of five playoff matchups with Peterborough – everyone from which the Petes emerged victorious.

Ironically, the local juniors have not only recorded a winning record in each of their last four season series with Peterborough but are actually riding a nine game home winning streak against the lads from the Lift Lock City. The teams have battled once this year, Sudbury opening play on the road on October 5th with a 4-0 win over the Petes.

It marked the first Sudbury shutout in Peterborough since a 6-0 win back on January 31st, 1976. The Petes, who will face the North Bay Battalion on the road on Thursday (Peterborough edged NB 6-5 in overtime) before continuing on to Sudbury, snapped a three game losing skid last weekend with a 5-4 overtime win over the Brantford Bulldogs. This also marked the first time in six games that coach Rob Wilson and company had managed to put up more than three goals on the board.

MARCHING ON / MOVING AHEAD VERSUS THE BATTALION
Meeting up with their northern rivals to the east on the road on Sunday afternoon, the Wolves will mark the midway point in their eight game season series with the North Bay Battalion. A 5-4 overtime win at home on November 1st allowed the Wolves to put an end to a six game losing streak versus NB, with Sudbury posting only two victories in their past 17 head to head matchups with the Troops.

The Wolves may or may not be without the services of Quentin Musty (* Musty has been suspended for two games), the man who netted the OT game-winning goal versus the Battalion, after the first round NHL draft pick was assessed a match penalty on a slew foot infraction last night in Sault Ste Marie.

A pair of players who found the back of the net for Sudbury in the 7-4 loss have worked their way up to the top of the team goal scoring parade – with neither player likely to have garnered much traction in any pre-season discussion regarding players who might lead the way in goals for the Wolves in 2023-2024.

Of course, back in August, the notion of Dalibor Dvorsky donning the blue and white this year was but a pipe-dream for most Wolves’ fans, with the 10th overall pick in the 2023 NHL draft beginning the season in Sweden. Suiting up in his first OHL game on October 20th, the 19 year-old Slovakian forward picked up at least one point in his first eight games with the Wolves, totaling 6 goals and 5 assists during that stretch.

While the streak was snapped in the Wolves 4-0 loss in Brantford last weekend, Dvorsky was back on track against the Hounds, netting a short-handed goal to narrow the deficit to 6-3 at the time. Dvorsky now has seven goals on the year, an amount that is equaled only by Evan Konyen, who added two more to his season total last night.

A fourth round pick for Sudbury back in 2020, Konyen lit the lamp 16 and 17 times in 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 respectively but is well on his way to eclipsing those numbers by sometime early in the new year.