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.

The Sudbury Wolves will contest three games this week, all of which will take place within the friendly confines of the Sudbury Arena. But with the Soo Greyhounds (34-17-1-5), North Bay Battalion (31-23-2-1) and Kingston Frontenacs (26-26-3-2) all paying a visit to a local junior crew well below the .500 mark (23-32-2-0), its safe to assume that the Wolves will need to tap into every bit of their home ice advantage over the course of the next five days.

For as much as the Sudbury Wolves have done a nice job in recent weeks to register key wins against teams above them in the standings, solidifying their shot at the playoffs, some upcoming matchups against the adversary they are trying to eliminate from post-season contention does present an opportunity to take care of the task at hand, on their own.

Perhaps more so than against any other team in the league, the Sudbury Wolves should need little reminding that keeping their foot on the gas against the OHL franchise most synonymous with the automobile industry is likely a good idea. The Oshawa Generals have beaten the Wolves in Sudbury four of their past five encounters and one has to go back to the mid-seventies to find any kind of a lenghty stretch of success for the Pack against the Gens.

Even a modest four game home winning streak takes us back to February 11th (2011) when a pair of goals by Michael Sgarbossa helped to offset a four-goal performance from Oshawa sniper Christian Thomas, with Sudbury edging the visitors 6-5. That run of prosperity came to an end following the season opening game of the 2012-2013 campaign as tallies from Dominik Kubalik (2), Nathan Pancel and Michael Kantor helped the Wolves double the Generals 4-2.

As a rule of thumb, these combattants tend to limit the fight to just 60 minutes of hockey in the nickel city. October 30th (2015) was the last time Sudbury and Oshawa would head to overtime in northern Ontario, with Anthony Cirelli spoiling the evening for the Wolves fans with a game-winning goal at 2:02 of period number four. Scoring for Sudbury in the 5-4 loss were Dmitry Sokolov, Patrick Murphy, Danny Desrochers and Pavel Jenys.

Looking to lock down eighth place in the next week or so, the Sudbury Wolves trail the fifth place North Bay Battalion by 21-points at the moment. Honestly, that’s not a huge gap in talent – and yet the squad to the east have held dominion over Sudbury this year, winning five of six as the teams reconvene in North Bay this Sunday.

Perhaps it’s just payback for the 2024-2025 campaign when the Wolves recorded victories in five of the eight games contested during the year. And where the franchise matchups between Sudbury and Barrie have seen damatic swings in momentum, the Wolves – Battalion sets dating back to the tilts in Brampton have seen very few years of complete domination.

In terms of an eight game set, the 2009-2010 season was a good one for the locals, reeling off six straight wins, commencing with a 3-0 shutout on October 18th (32-save shutout by Alain Valiquette; goals from Eric O’Dell, John McFarland, Kyle Tarini) and culminating with a 4-3 shootout win on the road at the end of January (John Kurtz with S/O winner; regulation goals from Frank Corrado, Matias Sointu, Jared Staal.