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 will contest three games this week, all of which will take place within the friendly confines of the Sudbury Arena. But with the Soo Greyhounds (34-17-1-5), North Bay Battalion (31-23-2-1) and Kingston Frontenacs (26-26-3-2) all paying a visit to a local junior crew well below the .500 mark (23-32-2-0), its safe to assume that the Wolves will need to tap into every bit of their home ice advantage over the course of the next five days.

The Wolves will wrap up their six game stint with the Soo Greyhounds Wednesday night in Sudbury and while an October 17th 4-2 home ice win may have given some reason for hope, ensuing setbacks by scores of 3-1, 8-2, 6-2 and 4-2 have ensured the Lock City lads a season series win in 2025-2026.

Still, bookending the set of a half-dozen games with victories against a Sault Ste Marie team that added at the trade deadline, acquiring two-time World Juniors netminder Carter George would make for a nice sign-off this year. A pair of home ice wins over the Hounds in 2024-2025 marked the first time in eight years that Sudbury have hit the win column more than once at home against SSM.

Prior to that, once has to go back to 2015-2016 when a two-goal performance by 2026 Olympian Mikkael Aagaard lifted the home team to a 6-4 win, with Wolves repeating 11 days later as Kyle Capobianco, Macauley Carson and David Levin joined Aagard on the scoresheet in a 4-2 win.

The North Bay Battalion might well sit right in the middle of the Eastern Conference pack when it comes to keeping the puck out of their net – but against the Sudbury Wolves this year, the Battalion have often managed to build a fortress.

In dropping four of the five meetings to date, Sudbury has managed to score more than three goals only once (6-2 win in January) and have been kept to two or less on three occasions. For a young team, the Wolves have shown signs of possessing some offensive abilities that simply needed more game experience to shine.

During the month of February, the team has bounced back and forth. In five of their games, the team has been limited to two goals or less – but in the remaining five games, the local juniors have netted a run of 5-4-4-6-6 – a far cry from the start of the season when the Wolves opened the 2025-2026 campaign finding the back of the net just eight times, in total, in their first seven games.

The first meeting of the year between the Sudbury Wolves and Kingston Frontenacs featured something of an OHL rarity: more goals scored than penalties assessed. The Fronts prevailed 3-2 in Kingston on January 30th when Alex Misiak snapped a 2-2 tie with 5:15 remaining as referees Drew Jackson and James Kraft tagged players for just four total infractions, three to the winners.

Sudbury will be looking for a third straight regular season home ice win over Kingston – though the latter did sweep the Wolves aside in four straight in a Eastern Conference quarter-final matchup in 2024-2025 – with two of those games obviously contested in Sudbury.

The team record for consecutive home ice wins against the Kingston franchise – Canadians from 1973 to 1988; Frontenacs from 1989 to current; and Raiders for one solitary season in 1988-1989 – sits at seven, with that streak kicked off in October of 2003. Alexander Eaton scored the GWG with less than two minutes to play as Sudbury edged Kingston 5-4, with Stefan Blaho (2), NHL linesman Shandor Alphonso and Zack Stortini also hitting the mark.

The seventh win of the streak came in November of 2009 – and was also by just one goal (4-3). Mind you, the Wolves jumped out to a 4-0 lead on goals from John Kurtz, Kyle Tarini, Steeve Reese and Eric O’Dell before Kingston stormed back with three of their own.