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 upcoming first round playoff matchup between the Sudbury Wolves and Brantford Bulldogs marks the fifth time these franchises have met in post-season play, but the first such encounters since the spring of 2013. In fact, the entire quartet of previous battles came opposite the Belleville Bulls as the Wolves managed to bypass the Hamilton Bulldogs era (2015-2023) entirely.

Things did not start well for the northern clan in this tete a tete as Belleville not only swept aside the Wolves in four straight games in 1999, but did so by a combined score of 31-12. Jonathan Cheechoo (4G + 6A) and Justin Papineau (3G + 7A) paced the Bulls attack, with Branko Radivojevic (8 pts), Kevin Baker (7) and Ryan Ready (7) not far behind as Sudbury netminders Mike Gorman and Andrew Raycroft were under siege pretty much from start to finish of that series.

In a 3 vs 6 battle that featured teams seperated by 28 points in the standings, the gap seemed far greater than that as a Wolves team that included the likes of Norm Milley, Jason Jaspers, Derek MacKenzie, Taylor Pyatt, Mike Fisher and Alexei Semenov continued to mature.

In the minds of the current generation of Wolves fans, very little can hold a candle to the Sudbury vs Belleville series in April of 2007. The local juniors earned their last Eastern Conference crown in six games, four of which went into overtime (three of which Sudbury emerged victorious) and five of which were decided by a single goal.

For as much as overtime tallies from Jared Staal (13:50 – 1st OT – game 2 – 3-2 Sudbury) and Justin Donati (6:17 – 1st OT – game 4 – 3-2 Sudbury) were key, the one that will live on through the ages has to be the power play snipe from Matt Dias at 3:23 of the third overtime period, with P.K. Subban in the box serving an interference penalty.

Where the offense carried Belleville to their first series win against Sudbury (1999), it was their defensive intensity and the lack of Sudbury scoring – two elements which often go hand in hand – which allowed the Bulls to take the 2009 QF affair four games to two. Through the opening four games on that series, the Wolves bested opposing netminder Mike Murphy all of five times, in total.

A 6-1 win on home ice that featured a rare natural hat trick + one from Matt Dias – the SSM native scored the first four goals of the game between the 0:59 second mark (P1) and 19:08 of period two – gave the home fans something to celebrate, though their joy was short-lived as Belleville closed out the series on home ice with a 6-1 win.

In the spring of 2013, this story comes full circle as Belleville again sweeps Sudbury 4-0, albeit this time in the second round of post-season play. Going from bad to worse, the Wolves failed to score a single goal in front of their hometown faithful, blanked 4-0 and 5-0 as Malcom Subban extracts a pound of justice for his older brother, posting shutouts two days apart.