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.

With their annual eight game series with the Barrie Colts only just beginning – the teams meet for the second and third time in 2025-2026 with a home and home this weekend – and all signs pointing to a great race in the middle-of-the-pack portion of the Eastern Conference Central Division, the games that lie just ahead or likely more paramount than normal for the Sudbury Wolves.

With their 5-3 triumph over the visiting Colts back on October 24th (Alex Pharand, Kieron Walton and Nathan Villeneuve paced the attack with three points each), the Wolves extended their current winning streak against Barrie to four games. A sweep of the encounters set for this Thursday in Barrie and Friday in northern Ontario would still bring Sudbury only two-thirds of the way to setting a new all-time record in this series.

From February 23rd (2019) through to March 5th (2020), the Wolves racked up nine straight wins against the Colts. That stretch of success was kicked off on the road as Sudbury stormed back from a 4-2 second period deficit, netting the final four goals of the game as two goal efforts from Nolan Hutcheson and Quinton Byfield paced the team to a 6-4 win.

The March 5th (2020) battle, also in Barrie, would be the third to last game that the Wolves would play before Covid turned the world upside down. A Blake Murray hat trick showed the way in an 8-3 victory as fans of the team were salivating at the playoff dreams of a squad that held down first place in the Central prior to the derailment of all things sports.

An 8-2 Sudbury Wolves triumph over the Peterborough Petes back on October 26th was the latest continuation of a very solid run for the local juniors opposite their friends from the Lakelands of Ontario. The nickel city lads have captured four of the last six season series against the Petes and have not lost more than two games of their annual four game set since back in 2017-2018.

This was definitely not the case early on. Peterborough welcomed the Wolves to the OHL in 1972-1973 (in what was then Ontario Major Junior “A” hockey), besting the Sudbury crew four times and playing to a pair of ties in the remaining two clashes. In fact, it wasn’t until December 20th (1973) that the relative newcomers to the party first tasted victory against the Petes, earning a road win by the closest of margins (6-5).

A little over a year ago, the teams combined for the lowest every combined score in a Sudbury – Peterborough match-up (and the lowest score possible, to be honest) as a first period goal by Chase Coughlan and a 40-save performance from Finn Marshall lifted the visitors to a 1-0 conquest.