It's Go Time once again OHL fans! Let's start
with some Sudbury Wolves stuff.
The Wolves are no longer the most penalized
squad in the league. No, this is not an April Fool's joke, it's
true.
Sudbury has been overtaken by the Plymouth
Whalers, who now lead with 1,155 penalty minutes in 43 games.
Sudbury has 1,142 in 42 games.
Plymouth went wild on Jan. 5 in a game
against Barrie that featured no less than seven fights and
numerous ejections. The Whalers were hit with 83 penalty
minutes in the game.
Interestingly, even though the Wolves are the
second most penalized team, they have no player in the Top-10
for player penalty minutes.
Rugged forward Devin DiDiomete leads Sudbury
with 128 minutes in 42 games, but sits 11th on the overall
penalty minutes list.
Thanks to recent trades, the Wolves now own
the biggest defence corps in the league. Nick Tuzzolino is
six-foot-six and 220 pounds, Marc Staal is
six-foot-four and 205 pounds, Adam McQuaid is
six-foot-four and 200 pounds, Ryan Hastings is six-foot-three
and 225 pounds, Troy Murray is six-
foot-three and 210 pounds, Jonathan D'Aversa
is six-foot-two and 200 pounds and Ryan Crouch is six-foot-two
and 190 pounds.
I don't care who you are or what team you
play for, that's a real nightmare to deal with if you're an
opposing forward.
Three Wolves players have been named to
participate in the 2006 Bell OHL All-Star Classic game. Forward
Ben Pouliot and defencemen Staal and D'Aversa will compete for
the Eastern Conference. The game takes place on Wednesday, Feb.
1 in Belleville at Yardmen Arena. Game time is 7 pm. All the
action can be seen live on Rogers Sportsnet (Channel 34 on
regular cable).
The game will also feature top players from
around the league, including London's super scorer Rob Schremp,
who leads the league with 90 points in 31 games.
Schremp showed off his magical offensive
talent last Friday evening, helping the Knights dispatch
Sudbury 5-3 with two goals and four points.
In his last six games, Schremp has seven
goals and 17 points. Now that's a hot player! Schremp was also
named the OHL Player of the Week after scoring four goals and
eight points in two games last week.
Speaking of hot, how about the Kitchener
Rangers. After a slow start, the Rangers have been getting
stronger and stronger as the season wears on. Last week,
Kitchener cracked the CHL Mosaik MasterCard Top-10 rankings at
number 10.
They are the hottest team in the OHL right
now, having gone 8-1-1-0 in their last 10 games.
A part of that rise to prominence has been
the play of Kitchener's top four scorers, who have been nothing
short of dynamite over the last two weeks.
Leading scorer Evan McGrath is on fire with
eight goals and 16 points in the last 10 games. Former Wolves
player Craig Voakes has 16 points in his last 10 games,
including a four-goal outburst against Plymouth on Jan. 14.
Sophomore forward Justin Azevedo has seven goals and 12 points
in the 10 games, as does sniper David Lomas.
This team is red hot!
Speaking of streaking players, Sudbury native
Julian Talbot, who plays for Ottawa, has crept into the Top-20
in OHL scoring.
In his last seven games, Talbot has eight
goals and 13 points. These totals have pushed his regular
season totals to 23 goals and 57 points in 44 games, good for
17th in the league.
The rookie race is heating up. London's
Sergei Kostitsyn leads with 17 goals and 52 points in 36 games,
but he has competition. Oshawa phenom John Tavares, who is only
15 years of age, has five goals in his last four games, and is
catching up fast. Tavares is three years younger than
Kostitsyn. He now has 28 goals and 45 points n 39 games.
The OHL recently released some interesting
statistics on all kinds of areas including attendance, penalty
analysis and goal scoring among other items.
Here's a quick look at a few things that
caught my eye. All stats quoted are as of Jan. 1, 2006 (the
first 360 games).
Fighting is down 29 percent compared to last
season from 849 in 2004-05 to 603 so far this season.
Fights per game are down a whopping 77
percent.
Goals per game have jumped from 6.10 last
year to 7.26 this season.
The goals scored increase is probably due to
restraining and stick fouls called. Restraining calls are up
92.5 percent from last year (1,329 to 2,558. Stick infractions
are up 26 percent from 1,136 to 1,431.
London and Kitchener are the only two teams
that have full attendance figures.
London, thanks to its awesome John Labatt
Centre that holds 9,091 people, leads the OHL in attendance
with 181,810 fans attending 20 games.
Sudbury had 80,292 fans go to their first 18
home games for an average attendance of 4,461 fans per game,
good for fourth overall. It's also an
increase of 331 people per game from last
season.
