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.

Yet another early season Friday night away from home as the Halloween weekend features a quick two game road swing for the Sudbury Wolves, with stops in Kitchener and Owen Sound – the top two teams in the Midwest Division.

There is simply no denying that the Sudbury Wolves road record over the course of the past thirty years is downright scary. From October of 1995 to November of 2014, the Woofers went winless 24 straight times at the Memorial Auditorium. And while they now have two wins to show for their past nine visits, neither of those has occurred in regulation time.

On November 16th (2014), the Wolves and Rangers needed a 14-player shootout to settle matters in a 3-2 win for the visiting northerners. After Jacob Harris and Ivan Kashtanov bested Dawson Carty in the first three attempts, both goalies (Samuel Tanguay between the pipes for Sudbury) shut the door until Brody Milne buried the game-winning goal for head coach Paul Fixter.

Things didn’t go quite that far on October 7th (2018) as Sudbury spotted Kitchener a 2-0 lead but forced overtime thanks to tallies from Darian Pilon and Kirill Nizhnikov, with Blake Murray providing the overtime heroics as the Wolves, once again, claimed a 3-2 victory.

Few would expect an extremely low scoring affair. While a 13-8 Kitchener win marked the extreme on the offensive scale when these teams meet in the Octoberfest City, there has yet to be a game that has seen the Rangers and Wolves combined for fewer than three goals with the latter on the road.

For as much as the Owen Sound Attack lead the Midwest currently with a record of 10-5-0-1, the Sudbury Wolves have generally fared much better in the Grey-Bruce Peninsula than in Kitchener (which is not necessarily saying a lot).

Still, the local juniors did manage the home and home sweep last year (3-1 in Owen Sound; 8-1 in Sudbury) and have won three of the last four meetings between the teams. Sudbury also captured four of the six matchups in Owen Sound between 2006 and 2012 – though that gave way to ten straight road losses at the Harry Lumley Arena.

Interesting stat from the 46 games to date between these teams: Sudbury has never recorded a shutout against Owen Sound (the Attack have four clean sheets against the Wolves) while Owen Sound has never beaten Sudbury in a shootout. The Wolves have bested the Attack three times in the end of game skills competition, including once on the road when Josh Leivo lifted his team to victory after Kristoff Kontos forced OT, deadlocking the contest at 3-3 with 46 seconds to play in November of 2011.