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 and the Kingston Frontenacs (formerly Canadians) will meet in the playoffs for the fifth time in OHL history, though the last such meeting came in March of 2006 as Sudbury captured the best of seven quarter-final set in six games.

After finishing the season seven points back of the fourth place Frontenacs, the Wolves overcame a 5-3 game one loss on the road, winning three straight and capturing a series in which Kevin Beech recorded a pair of shutouts and Benoit Pouliot scored no less than eight goals.

Taking all three games that were contested at the Sudbury Arena, the Wolves outshot the Fronts 122-95 in those encounters. Unfortunately, the playoff run would go no further as the local juniors were swept in four straight in round two by the Eastern Conference champion Peterborough Petes.

In yet another first round battle of the 4th & 5th place teams in the Eastern Conference, the Sudbury – Kingston matchup was a highly anticipated one, with both teams finishing the regular season with 84 points.

That competitive closeness went right out the window, however, as the Wolves eliminated the Frontenacs in five games, giving way to a dramatic seven game series with the Barrie Colts that saw Sudbury drop the final encounter 2-1.

With names like Norm Milley, Jason Jaspers, Taylor Pyatt, Derek Mackenzie and Dennis Wideman dotting the scoresheet with regularity, the Wolves started the series quickly with triumphs by scores of 3-2 and 6-2 at home. A 6-3 loss in game three in Kingston gave way to a near-mirrored score in game four as Pyatt and Milley scored two goals each, with Sudbury moving on thanks to a 3-1 game five victory.

While the decade that was the eighties was not kind to the Sudbury faithful, the team missing the playoffs in eight of ten years, the spring of 1980 was not all bad. The sixth and final year of the Ontario Major Junior Hockey League (the league was deemed the OHL the following fall) would see the Wolves (5th place in the Leyden Division) get the better of the Kingston crew one spot above them in post-season play.

The Wolves swept the best of five affair, sandwiching a pair of wins in Kingston (5-1 & 7-5) around a 5-2 final on home ice, wit the locals falling victim (again) to the Peterborough Petes in round two.

The only Kingston series win over Sudbury would come in a different time altogether, when the series were considered “total point affairs” (Canadians took the series 9-3) and overtime tie games went in the books as such (the teams played to a 1-1 draw on March 25th 1977 in Kingston).

The Canadians were led that year by the one-two punch of future NHLers Tony McKegney and Ken Linseman while the Wolves countered with the likes of Ron Duguay, Randy Pierce, Wes Jarvis, John Baby and Hector Marini, all of whom registered 90 points or more that season.