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 a home contest Friday against the Barrie Colts and a road affair the next afternoon versus the Brampton Steelheads, the Sudbury Wolves will enjoy very little tranquility as they close off a busy weekend with their one and only visit to face the Guelph Storm on Sunday.

The Friday battle between Barrie and Sudbury will mark the fourth time the teams have met in this month alone, with the local juniors still looking for their first win, outscored 17-7 in the first three clashes with the Colts. Though four meetings in a month might seem like a lot, this is hardly new territory for this divisional rivalry.

In fact, last November the teams mirrored this schedule as the Wolves recorded a win and a pair of overtime losses in the four game set. Prior to this, two game monthly sets were typically the max, with the occasional troika mixed in. In February of 2002, Sudbury took two of three from Barrie, toppling the Colts 5-2 in the rubber game on the 22nd as Jerry Connell netted a hat trick to lead the home team to victory.

Three years later, the Valentine month also smiled upon the northern crew in two of the three tete a tetes with their closest adversary to the south, the Wolves edging the Colts 3-2 on February 11th to sweep a home and home set before being edged 2-1 near the end of the month.

An 8-2 loss at the hands of the Brampton Steelheads last Sunday was hardly the way that coach Scott Barney and company wanted to kickoff a six game set in 2025-2026 against a foe that could well be the team to beat in order to secure a playoff spot in March. Good news in the numbers for Sudbury lies in the fact that the marked the continuation of a seven game pattern in Brampton where a Wolves’ win has been followed by a loss – and so on and so on.

As the Pack continue to look for their defensive game, the Steelheads offer little in the way of relief, scoring at least four goals in more in each of their past nine home outings with Sudbury – and six goals or more in six of those games.

Recent years have been kind to the Wolves in their two game sets with Guelph. The last time the Storm took both ends of this annual matchup was the 2012-2013 campaign. Since then, Sudbury have won the series outright on four occasions and earned a split six other times.

In the first year of this franchise battle, dating back to when the Storm were the Toronto Marlboros, the perennial Ontario powerhouse would light up the Wolves, hitting double digits in three of the four contests in the GTA. Since then, Sudbury has surrendered ten goals or more to Toronto / Hamilton / Guelph only twice, the last time coming in 1986-1987.

In fact, in 11 meetings in Guelph between December of 1997 and November of 2006, the Wolves allowed more than three goals against just twice, giving up just one in no less than seven different affairs.