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.

Where some OHL seasons find teams juggling for playoff positions, the Sudbury Wolves enter the final three regular season games of the 2024-2025 campaign with a fairly solid hold of sixth place in the Eastern Conference.

Three points ahead of a Niagara Ice Dogs team that has struggled through much of the second half of the schedule and is 2-7-1-0 in their past ten games, the Wolves close off with home games against both the Soo Greyhounds and Oshawa Generals, before travelling to North Bay to face the Battalion on Sunday.

Wednesday night, the local juniors will hit the ice in search of their first three game home sweep of the Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds since 2008-2009, having claimed victories of 3-1 and 7-1 in their two previous outings in the Nickel City.

When they last accomplished this feat via a 6-4 mid-February (2009) triumph over the Soo crew, the Wolves jumped out to a 4-0 lead on home ice and rode two goal performances by both Eric O’Dell and Akim Aliu to victory.

Facing the Oshawa Generals for the third time in 14 days, much of the Sudbury Wolves numbers in the series have already been subjected to a thorough crunch in March.

Though a season split of their four game set is the best that coach Scott Barney and company can hope for this year, that’s not all bad when one considers that Sudbury did not win a single season series from Oshawa from the 1977-1978 season through to the 1994-1995 campaign.

As for a quick handicap of the predicted Sudbury goal scoring in the contest this Friday, your best bet sits with a wager for either four or five goals to find the back of the net for the Wolves. In eight of their past 11 meetings in northern Ontario with the Generals, the scoreboard for the home side has reflected one of those two numbers.

For as much as the Sudbury rivals to the east are likely to be fighting for their playoff lives come Sunday afternoon at home, the matchup between the Wolves and Battalion is not likely to ease the drama one iota.

The three previous meetings of these two franchises in North Bay this year has resulted in a split of overtime wins (4-3 for Sudbury on October 20th; 6-5 for North Bay on November 17th) and a 3-2 regulation win for the Battalion on January 26th.

This will mark the second time in the past four years that Sudbury will close out regular season play with a battle with the Battalion. On April 15th (2022), the teams closed out their Covid-induced 12 game season series in the nickel city as North Bay downed the Wolves 3-1, peppering goaltender Mitchell Weeks with 45 shots.