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.

A schedule nightmare is doing the Sudbury Wolves no favours. Mired in a “one win in their past eight games” funk, the Wolves kicked off a stretch of six of their next seven outings on the road with a very solid effort in Brantford last night.

Unfortunately, a tough 2-1 loss to the hottest team in the league provided little consolation to the crew who now make their way opposite the Niagara Ice Dogs (2nd in Central Division) on Friday before facing a near-identical adversary (to themselves) in the form of the Erie Otters some 24 hours later.

Despite their recent challenges, the Sudbury lads still hold down 6th place in the Eastern Conference with a record of 23-19-5-0 (51 points), in no real danger of missing the playoffs. The Otters, for their part, hold down 5th place in the West with a season mark of 24-19-3-1.

Following this, the Wolves return home for a mid-week match-up with the Brampton Steelheads next Wednesday and then play three games in four days on the road on Family Day weekend with stops in Flint, Saginaw and Guelph. Pretty much the only silver lining to all of this is that the team closes out their 2024-2025 schedule with eight of their final 12 encounters at home.

While the Wolves have just one win to show for their four battles to date with the Ice Dogs this year (along with an OT loss), their success, if you want to call it that, has come at the Meridian Centre they will visit tomorrow.

In fact, Sudbury has picked up points in six straight games at the home of the Ice Dogs, their only loss coming back on November 3rd when they opened their six-game season set with Niagara with a 4-3 overtime setback.

If coach Scott Barney and company can find a way to hold a much improved Ice Dogs team to two goals or less, they could be in great shape. Over the course of the past 14 times that these teams have met in the Niagara Escarpment, Sudbury has never scored less than two goals – and even that number was recorded only once, in a 6-2 loss in February of 2023.

Interesting Stat: in six straight games played between October 17th (2015) and March 18th (2017), the Ice Dogs would score EXACTLY three goals, on the button, at home versus the Wolves – six straight times.

Beyond the similarities in the season records, Erie and Sudbury boast an uncanny number of comparable statistics for the 2024-2025 season to date.

Both teams have traded goals for and goals against at an almost dead even rate, the Wolves sitting with a goal differential of -7 (171 GF vs 178 GA) versus -3 (166 GF vs 169 GA) for the Otters.

Special team track equally as closely, both on the power play numbers (SBY – 23.9%; ERIE – 22.8%) and even more so when the teams are shorthanded (SBY – 78.9% vs ERIE – 78.2%).

The local juniors might not want to talk about PIMs, however, as Erie ranks as the third least penalized team in the league with 525 total minutes, behind only Guelph (522) and Kingston (518).

At 712 total minutes, the Wolves are behind only the Saginaw Spirit (721) as far as teams that spend the greatest amount of time in the penalty box.