Sudbury Wolves 2024-25 Season Thread, Part III

[Between The Goalpost]

Sudbury Wolves(25-21-5-0=55pts) @ Saginaw Spirit(29-21-1-1=60pts)

- Sudbury coming off a strong win against Flint last night.
- With the win, Sudbury moves into 6th place in the Eastern Conference... 1 point ahead of the Steelheads who play in Oshawa tonight.
- Saginaw won a thriller in OT last night against Windsor.
- Leading OHL scorer Michael Misa will look to add to his league leading 103 point total tonight.
- Sudbury last 10 --> 3-7-0-0
- Saginaw last 10 --> 7-2-0-1

Sudbury Wolves Line-up
Forwards:
Musty(27) - Villeneuve(89) - Walton(22)
Molnar(96) - Chitaroni(91) - Pharand(21)
Henderson(77) - Ziliotto(16) - Coughlan(9)
Klinkhammer(48) - Ryan(2) - Street(73)

Defence:
O'Dell(4) - McCoy(19)
DeAngelis(95) - Mews(88)
Roberts(12) - Blonda(93)

Goalies:
Marshall(31) --- Starting
Krawkchuk(30)

Thank you for these. It's great for a guy still learning the game.

 

[I Loveallsports]

Sudbury Wolves(25-21-5-0=55pts) @ Saginaw Spirit(29-21-1-1=60pts)

- Sudbury coming off a strong win against Flint last night.
- With the win, Sudbury moves into 6th place in the Eastern Conference... 1 point ahead of the Steelheads who play in Oshawa tonight.
- Saginaw won a thriller in OT last night against Windsor.
- Leading OHL scorer Michael Misa will look to add to his league leading 103 point total tonight.
- Sudbury last 10 --> 3-7-0-0
- Saginaw last 10 --> 7-2-0-1

Sudbury Wolves Line-up
Forwards:
Musty(27) - Villeneuve(89) - Walton(22)
Molnar(96) - Chitaroni(91) - Pharand(21)
Henderson(77) - Ziliotto(16) - Coughlan(9)
Klinkhammer(48) - Ryan(2) - Street(73)

Defence:
O'Dell(4) - McCoy(19)
DeAngelis(95) - Mews(88)
Roberts(12) - Blonda(93)

Goalies:
Marshall(31) --- Starting
Krawkchuk(30)

They should move Coughlan up a line and drop pharhand down 3rd. Line. You're not getting much from Alex on the 2nd. Chitter and zilly can swap lines too. Wolves have nothing to lose making these changes

 

[Wiserbud]

Game. Over.

 

[djscooter]

Who are we wanting to see as the OAs next year, who are we hopping the wolves nab in the OHL draft?

 

[billoink]

Worth watching just for Misa, Marshall reminds be of Vondras, I guess going after a better goalie in the event of injury never crossed the GMs mind.

 

[zoomieking]

Lack of depth, less experience, and less talent are certainly unfortunate things, but lack of effort is unacceptable, and should not be rewarded with top six and PP icetime.
Just off the top of my head, I would play Coughlin, Henderson, Chitaroni, or even Street in Walton's place right now.
Street absolutely on the PP.
Just tell him to go stand in front of the net and let the defencemen try to move him.
88,27,95, and 96 can pass the puck around and try to get it there.

I agree with everything you said here

Looked like musty had a long shift on that second goal.

Looked like musty had a long shift on that second goal.

This is something that happens a lot with the top guys. And usually ends up in a turnover or goal

 

[billoink]

I agree with everything you said here

Street cannot stay up with the play, a 20 second shift maybe. If you think he should be on a power play then this team is in big trouble. He adds nothing else but the odd hit. Sorry but I don’t see him anything else but a crowd pleaser.

 

[djscooter]

Street cannot stay up with the play, a 20 second shift maybe. If you think he should be on a power play then this team is in big trouble. He adds nothing else but the odd hit. Sorry but I don’t see him anything else but a crowd pleaser.

Rarely gets a hit off because of his lack of footspeed even

 

[billoink]

This team was steered in the wrong direction making some kind of feeble attempt at making a run. Aside from Mews they made no improvement on defence, they added nothing of any importance up front counting on call ups and a very average player in Ziliotto. Would it not have made more sense to trade Your overagers like McCoy, and offered up the likes of Delic, Musty, and Chucky who all won’t be back? Could we still have made the playoffs, I think so. We now will most likely finish in Seventh place and have gotten no assets for the future.Do you believe accountability for this kind of decision making should fall on the GM? If not who.

 

[jrwhopper]

This team was steered in the wrong direction making some kind of feeble attempt at making a run. Aside from Mews they made no improvement on defence, they added nothing of any importance up front counting on call ups and a very average player in Ziliotto. Would it not have made more sense to trade Your overagers like McCoy, and offered up the likes of Delic, Musty, and Chucky who all won’t be back? Could we still have made the playoffs, I think so. We now will most likely finish in Seventh place and have gotten no assets for the future.Do you believe accountability for this kind of decision making should fall on the GM? If not who.

I said it wayy before the deadline that this management group was on glue if they thought they had a chance of competing in the east. I thought it was little harsh coming off that loss to Peterborough but here we are.

We had the oppertunity to ship guys out and build towards our young guys and we would have been no worse off. Hell Saginaw traded three guys and could completely rebuild their team off those picks alone.

Wasted all those picks, our future, to win a handful of games the entire second half of the season and be swept again in the playoffs.

 

[Sinbad]

As long as Papineau is GM the Wolves have no chance of being successful, it is already a big enough challenge to get kids from southern Ontario to come north to play but when you have a GM who makes promises and then reneges on them it hurts not only his reputation but the whole organization’s.

 

[djscooter]

Anyone know what happened to Kimani Eccleston? Thought he was solid in his two games, certainly better then a lot of our bottom of the lineup guys.

 

[billoink]

I said it wayy before the deadline that this management group was on glue if they thought they had a chance of competing in the east. I thought it was little harsh coming off that loss to Peterborough but here we are.

We had the oppertunity to ship guys out and build towards our young guys and we would have been no worse off. Hell Saginaw traded three guys and could completely rebuild their team off those picks alone.

Wasted all those picks, our future, to win a handful of games the entire second half of the season and be swept again in the playoffs.

Agree he wanted to just win games at the cost of the future to make his bid to have his contract extended. A smart man would have went for trades bringing in players for the future that would have had a lot more influence on a resume than for the second season in a row going south after the trade deadline don’t you think?

 

[Wolfman Jack]

Agree he wanted to just win games at the cost of the future to make his bid to have his contract extended. A smart man would have went for trades bringing in players for the future that would have had a lot more influence on a resume than for the second season in a row going south after the trade deadline don’t you think?

I guess we will have to wait until the end of the season to see what accountability will be placed on management. I believe ownership will give him some slack at this time only because of injuries to key players. However agreed by seasons end if it's an early first round one exit there has to be a review of our GM's performance. Remember though maybe ownership wanted to make a push this year and forced our GM's hand. We will never know the discussions behind closed doors.

As for the deadline deals maybe there was not enough teams willing to make moves for what Sudbury was offering. Again as I have stated many times over and over again. If you plan on making a push you have to start dealing for depth pieces in November. Trying to do it all at the deadline will never work for Sudbury. A lot of players have no movement clauses and a mid range team like Sudbury is usually not a players preferred destination. Sudbury has to be top dog in the conference heading into a January deadline to maybe get the bigger pieces. I feel the Mews deal really fell onto our lap as he wanted out of Ottawa and there wasn't a ton of teams with the picks after already making their deals. So Sudbury was able to make that deal quite easily. It's too bad we weren't able to pick up a ringer up front and another depth player. Sort of what Kingston did by getting Hay and Willis. Getting two guys like that with a freebie in Zilliotto and Mews would be better depth wise for this team. But we just don't have the dogs up front to contend. I have to agree that we just are not as talented or deep as the top 4 or 5 teams in the East.

Defensively I really liked Jackson and think he was a better player than most think considering his age vs Roberts. I believe getting Mews we should have given up on Blonda instead and we could have probably retained some of those picks in that deal and not having to make the Roberts deal. That way we may have had more to get pieces up front.

I think next season having Mews and Blonda really makes us weak defensively as they really are more the offensive type and alike. Well at least Mews has proven that. Blonda has so much to learn still defensively and yet still has not been a real threat offensively. I hope he can become more composed and creative offensively. The skating and speed is there but the IQ isn't.

In hindsight I guess it's easy to say now. And I know if we were winning more since the deadline then none of these conversations would be happening. But all too often its these type of conversations we are having. Sadly all us Wolves fans just want to see a well managed team with strong coaching with a team that wins a conference championship or at least gets an appearance there 1 out of every 4 years. Standards need to be set higher for this organization. It should be reload and not always 4/5 years of mediocre play and rebuilding only to have it fall apart on the 4th year of a rebuild when it should be a contender. Scouting needs to be better, drafting needs to be better, signing players based on positional needs to better (goaltending) and trading/analyzing deadline needs along with asset management needs to be better.


WJ

 

[jamo27]

If Dario is serious about winning, he needs to find a better general manager, period. Looking at what they have now, I don’t see how this team challenges for anything for years.

 

[agillarda]

I guess we will have to wait until the end of the season to see what accountability will be placed on management. I believe ownership will give him some slack at this time only because of injuries to key players. However agreed by seasons end if it's an early first round one exit there has to be a review of our GM's performance. Remember though maybe ownership wanted to make a push this year and forced our GM's hand. We will never know the discussions behind closed doors.

As for the deadline deals maybe there was not enough teams willing to make moves for what Sudbury was offering. Again as I have stated many times over and over again. If you plan on making a push you have to start dealing for depth pieces in November. Trying to do it all at the deadline will never work for Sudbury. A lot of players have no movement clauses and a mid range team like Sudbury is usually not a players preferred destination. Sudbury has to be top dog in the conference heading into a January deadline to maybe get the bigger pieces. I feel the Mews deal really fell onto our lap as he wanted out of Ottawa and there wasn't a ton of teams with the picks after already making their deals. So Sudbury was able to make that deal quite easily. It's too bad we weren't able to pick up a ringer up front and another depth player. Sort of what Kingston did by getting Hay and Willis. Getting two guys like that with a freebie in Zilliotto and Mews would be better depth wise for this team. But we just don't have the dogs up front to contend. I have to agree that we just are not as talented or deep as the top 4 or 5 teams in the East.

Defensively I really liked Jackson and think he was a better player than most think considering his age vs Roberts. I believe getting Mews we should have given up on Blonda instead and we could have probably retained some of those picks in that deal and not having to make the Roberts deal. That way we may have had more to get pieces up front.

I think next season having Mews and Blonda really makes us weak defensively as they really are more the offensive type and alike. Well at least Mews has proven that. Blonda has so much to learn still defensively and yet still has not been a real threat offensively. I hope he can become more composed and creative offensively. The skating and speed is there but the IQ isn't.

In hindsight I guess it's easy to say now. And I know if we were winning more since the deadline then none of these conversations would be happening. But all too often its these type of conversations we are having. Sadly all us Wolves fans just want to see a well managed team with strong coaching with a team that wins a conference championship or at least gets an appearance there 1 out of every 4 years. Standards need to be set higher for this organization. It should be reload and not always 4/5 years of mediocre play and rebuilding only to have it fall apart on the 4th year of a rebuild when it should be a contender. Scouting needs to be better, drafting needs to be better, signing players based on positional needs to better (goaltending) and trading/analyzing deadline needs along with asset management needs to be better.


WJ

Sad thing is it was easy to see this would happen, all you had to do was look at the schedule. We took advantage of an easy first half schedule and new coach bump, none of the other teams knew exactly what Barney was going to run systems wise. The team rallied behind a Musty doesn't want to be here let's prove him wrong.

Then he came back and management said he ain't moving until you knock our socks off and no one bit so he stayed. Then you make moves to knock your young players down the lineup taking their confidence away and a much more difficult second half. This was always going to be the formula. Outside of the Colts we had virtually no games against the top teams. We had back an forth with Niagara and 2 games the Brampton was able to take to OT playing with half a Jr A team.

 

[I Loveallsports]

Barney likes to talk leadership group but regarding the forwards there's only one leader that's Villy. He does it all. No brainer for for captain next season.

Musty, Walton not leaders. When those type of players expect teammate's to fetch all the pucks in the hard areas and pass to them, thats not a leadership

Hope this changes by round 1 or it will be a short series.

 

[Wolf on a Wire]

I guess we will have to wait until the end of the season to see what accountability will be placed on management. I believe ownership will give him some slack at this time only because of injuries to key players. However agreed by seasons end if it's an early first round one exit there has to be a review of our GM's performance. Remember though maybe ownership wanted to make a push this year and forced our GM's hand. We will never know the discussions behind closed doors.

As for the deadline deals maybe there was not enough teams willing to make moves for what Sudbury was offering. Again as I have stated many times over and over again. If you plan on making a push you have to start dealing for depth pieces in November. Trying to do it all at the deadline will never work for Sudbury. A lot of players have no movement clauses and a mid range team like Sudbury is usually not a players preferred destination. Sudbury has to be top dog in the conference heading into a January deadline to maybe get the bigger pieces. I feel the Mews deal really fell onto our lap as he wanted out of Ottawa and there wasn't a ton of teams with the picks after already making their deals. So Sudbury was able to make that deal quite easily. It's too bad we weren't able to pick up a ringer up front and another depth player. Sort of what Kingston did by getting Hay and Willis. Getting two guys like that with a freebie in Zilliotto and Mews would be better depth wise for this team. But we just don't have the dogs up front to contend. I have to agree that we just are not as talented or deep as the top 4 or 5 teams in the East.

Defensively I really liked Jackson and think he was a better player than most think considering his age vs Roberts. I believe getting Mews we should have given up on Blonda instead and we could have probably retained some of those picks in that deal and not having to make the Roberts deal. That way we may have had more to get pieces up front.

I think next season having Mews and Blonda really makes us weak defensively as they really are more the offensive type and alike. Well at least Mews has proven that. Blonda has so much to learn still defensively and yet still has not been a real threat offensively. I hope he can become more composed and creative offensively. The skating and speed is there but the IQ isn't.

In hindsight I guess it's easy to say now. And I know if we were winning more since the deadline then none of these conversations would be happening. But all too often its these type of conversations we are having. Sadly all us Wolves fans just want to see a well managed team with strong coaching with a team that wins a conference championship or at least gets an appearance there 1 out of every 4 years. Standards need to be set higher for this organization. It should be reload and not always 4/5 years of mediocre play and rebuilding only to have it fall apart on the 4th year of a rebuild when it should be a contender. Scouting needs to be better, drafting needs to be better, signing players based on positional needs to better (goaltending) and trading/analyzing deadline needs along with asset management needs to be better.


WJ

Many great points here.
Heading into this season most fans were worried about just making the playoffs. Losing/trading all those 19year old players (including the loss of Dvorsky and Goyette) was gonna hurt.
Dario did say he was going to take a more active role with this team this season, I’m not sure any of us know how that has gone or what input he would have had about trades or player movement. Add in new coaches and there was a lot of uncertainty.
NO MUSTY: Allowed the team to set the pace and style of play that wasn’t focused on one player. We played fast north south hockey and special teams were very good. We played very well defensively and blocked a ton of shots and reached a 10 games over .500 record at the high point. Chucky was great, Marshall won goalie of the week! Dario and team never caved on trade demands from Musty camp and wouldn’t accept low ball offers.
All things trending way up. Expectation at an all time high. Musty returns and is at a 2pts/game clip…
Then it happens.
The downhill slide begins.
Musty breaks his hand. Schedule gets way tougher. Teams are adding talent.
Injuries to Molnar, Clayton, Krawchuk, Ewles,Dean, Delic..depth gets exposed. Some imports are not reporting. Clayton returns and immediately gets hurt again.
Musty returns and it takes awhile to set top two lines. Style of play changes. Play of key players drop off.
Here we are: we hold our OAs and Musty and add two defenders along with a Div.1 forward. Team is trying hard to gel and find consistency.
But at the end of the day this team was never in a position to go for it this season or next. After last season’s disappointing playoff exit we had no choice but to start rebuild.
We have a great core to be excited about: Blonda,Dean,Doucet, Smith, Ryan, Wreggit and Kearns is a good 08 core. Add Clayton, Chitaroni and Henderson from 07 group. O’Dell should have two more seasons. So we’ll see where this all is heading…
Just remember we still have a month to come together and prepare for playoffs. I for one am excited for the next chapter.

 

[billoink]

Many great points here.
Heading into this season most fans were worried about just making the playoffs. Losing/trading all those 19year old players (including the loss of Dvorsky and Goyette) was gonna hurt.
Dario did say he was going to take a more active role with this team this season, I’m not sure any of us know how that has gone or what input he would have had about trades or player movement. Add in new coaches and there was a lot of uncertainty.
NO MUSTY: Allowed the team to set the pace and style of play that wasn’t focused on one player. We played fast north south hockey and special teams were very good. We played very well defensively and blocked a ton of shots and reached a 10 games over .500 record at the high point. Chucky was great, Marshall won goalie of the week! Dario and team never caved on trade demands from Musty camp and wouldn’t accept low ball offers.
All things trending way up. Expectation at an all time high. Musty returns and is at a 2pts/game clip…
Then it happens.
The downhill slide begins.
Musty breaks his hand. Schedule gets way tougher. Teams are adding talent.
Injuries to Molnar, Clayton, Krawchuk, Ewles,Dean, Delic..depth gets exposed. Some imports are not reporting. Clayton returns and immediately gets hurt again.
Musty returns and it takes awhile to set top two lines. Style of play changes. Play of key players drop off.
Here we are: we hold our OAs and Musty and add two defenders along with a Div.1 forward. Team is trying hard to gel and find consistency.
But at the end of the day this team was never in a position to go for it this season or next. After last season’s disappointing playoff exit we had no choice but to start rebuild.
We have a great core to be excited about: Blonda,Dean,Doucet, Smith, Ryan, Wreggit and Kearns is a good 08 core. Add Clayton, Chitaroni and Henderson from 07 group. O’Dell should have two more seasons. So we’ll see where this all is heading…
Just remember we still have a month to come together and prepare for playoffs. I for one am excited for the next chapter.

Well put, however we have to see as fans ACCOUNTABILITY for the direction this organization took at the deadline. I agree we were in no position to make any kind of run that resulted in being buyers.

 

[WolvesFanInNorthBay]

Family Day Faceoff!

Sudbury Wolves(25-22-5-0=55pts) @ Guelph Storm(16-28-4-2=39pts) - 2:07PM

It's a busy day in the OHL today. Only 18 of the 20 scheduled teams are playing today as the Barrie/Kingston game has been postponed. In addition, Team Canada takes on Team Finland at 1pm at the 4 Nations face-off. Today, they play at TD Garden in Boston.

Today's storylines:
- Sudbury coming off an 8-3 loss to the Saginaw Spirit that saw Michael Misa be the first to reach 50 goals in Saginaw Spirit history off a hat-trick.
- Guelph's game on Saturday was postponed so their last game was a 7-4 loss to Oshawa on Valentine's Day
- Last meeting was November 22nd in Sudbury with the Wolves coming away with a 6-2 win. Walton led the way with 2 goals and 1 assist.
- Sudbury sits in 7th place in the Eastern Conference, 1 point behind the Steelheads who host the Ice Dogs this afternoon.
- Guelph sits last in the Western Conference 5 points out of a playoff spot.
- Sudbury last 10 - (3-7-0-0)
- Guelph last 10 - (3-5-0-2)

Sudbury Lineup:

Forwards
Walton(22) - Villeneuve(89) - Pharand(21)
Musty(27) - Chitaroni(91) - Molnar(96)
Henderson(77) - Ziliotto(16) - Coughlan(9)
Street(73) - Ryan(2) - Di Giantommaso(92)

Defence
DeAngelis(95) - McCoy(19)
O'Dell(4) - Mews(88)
Roberts(12) - Blonda(93)

Goalies
Marshall(31) - Starting
Krawchuk(30)

Edit: changed the fact that Misa was not the first in the CHL to reach 50 goals but the first Saginaw Spirit in history to reach 50 goals in a season.

 

[frontsfan67]

Well put, however we have to see as fans ACCOUNTABILITY for the direction this organization took at the deadline. I agree we were in no position to make any kind of run that resulted in being buyers.

If you don’t take chances you don’t win championships. Plain and simple. Kingston in same situation. Not ideal but you try and make the best of a bad situation. Both Kingston and Sudbury who loaded up may not make it on to round 2.

Next year if/when they trade Walton, Villeneuve and/or Mews they’ll be stocked with picks and young players and have a bright future and without a doubt be in the right direction for the next few years. If this is the direction they go I predict with the NCAA rumours the first one to go is Mews in the off season probably for a lot of picks.

If they don’t make trades then they'll be mediocre at best not only this year and next but for years to come. Won’t be better than Niagara for sure, Brampton should still be decent if they get martone back(Ivankovic will carry team I’m sure) north bay will take a leap as will Peterborough, Brantford will be good still, Barrie has some good parts to still stay competitive etc. all next year of course

Sudbury Wolves @ OHL - 2024‑2025 Stats

the 19 year olds are the ones that could be leading your team next year. Obvious with Musty he will be gone. Pharand not so sure- maybe 50/50. Lose him though and the OA quality really dips down.

Potential 3 OA’s:

Coughlan, Krawchuck, Giantomasso/Ewles/Roberts/Ziliotto?? I’m sure Molnar won’t be back as an OA/Import

Nowhere near as good as this year with McCoy, Delic and DeAngelis

 

[Jawk]

Today's storylines:
- Sudbury coming off an 8-3 loss to the Saginaw Spirit that saw Michael Misa be the first to reach 50 goals in the CHL

The absolute Lardis disrespect.

I joke of course.

 

[WolvesFanInNorthBay]

The absolute Lardis disrespect.

I joke of course.

Loll you’re right! Got my stats mixed up! First in Saginaw Spirit history to hit 50 goals in a season!

 

[djscooter]

Wolves are going to put a couple wins in a row against Guelph and Owen Sound, only to get smashed back down to reality against the Steelheads feels like the most likely scenario this week.

 

[cub]

this Guelph Tv production garbage no replays. Announcer called team Guelph Gryphons, didn't correct himself.