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.

There are ample reasons for the Sudbury Wolves to be approaching the four game stretch in the next seven days with a heightened sense of urgency. Not only does this mark the “ten games remaining” in regular season play barrier, but the first three are facing opponents who could easily be sitting across the ice when post-season play kicks off on March 26th to 28th.

A pair of teams who have struggled in the second half will converge upon the Sudbury Arena on Wednesday, with both the Wolves and the Niagara Ice Dogs hoping to recapture their early season success before the playoffs begin – and with both teams coming off big wins in their last encounters.

An overtime tally from Kieron Walton lifted Sudbury to a 3-2 win over the Brampton Steelheads last Sunday in one of the few contests where the Wolves looked like the team of October and November while the Ice Dogs arrive in town fresh off a 6-4 win over the London Knights.

After starting the season by winning 10 of their first 13 games to sit right atop the Eastern Conference, the Niagara crew have posted a record of 18-21-3-4 in dropping down to sixth place, now just four points ahead of the Wolves. After sweeping all six games in the head to head series last year, the Pack will need a win on Wednesday to earn to season win for a third straight time.

For the second straight year, the Sudbury Wolves and Oshawa Generals will contest three of the four games in their season series in the month of March, with the Generals riding a four game winning streak against the Wolves coming into this quirk of scheduling that kicks off this Friday in the nickel city.

Despite having played each other no less than 224 times to date, these teams have combined to score more than two goals all but on one occasion in Sudbury, a 2-0 Sudbury win on January 3rd (2014) – and have never combined to score less than three in any game in Oshawa.

To be clear, the 2014 game in Sudbury required a 40-save performance from Wolves’ netminder Franky Palazzese to keep the affair this low scoring, with Nicholas Baptiste breaking the ice midway through the second and Nathan Pancel adding an empty net insurance marker in the final minute of play.

The eighth and final matchup of the season between the Barrie Colts and Sudbury Wolves on Sunday afternoon will see the home team riding a two game winning streak against their divisional rivals, but this only after dropping their first five battles of the year.

It also marks the first time in more than two months the teams will have met and only the second meeting since the end of November, with their eight game series extremely front-end loaded in 2024-2025. For as much as the Colts have held the upper hand this year, the locals have played the second seed in the Eastern Conference quite tough, limiting coach Marty Williamson and company to three goals or less in all but two of the event encounters to date.

That tends to give the Wolves a fighting chance as Sudbury and Barrie are separated by just a single goal in terms of goals for this year – 215 to 214 – in favour of the Colts. If the northern crew are to have a chance, best to finish this one off in regulation time.

Sudbury has to go all the way back to February 20th (2004) to find a date on which they celebrate either a win in OT or SO versus the Colts, with a pair of games since then finishing in a tie (back when this was still en vogue) followed by ten straight losses at the hands of the Barrie side.