It’s January 7th, and the first season series for the Waywayseecappo Wolverines will be finalized after tonight, as they welcome the Northern Manitoba Blizzard.
It will be sixth and final meeting between the two teams, in a series that has been tightly contested.
In the first five games, the Blizzard lead the season series 3-1-1, with the last game being a 5-1 win for the Wolverines. That loss for the Blizzard started a five game losing streak, and ended up losing 7 of 8 games, but since then, they have rattled off five wins in a row before the Christmas break. Northern Manitoba will be playing their first game of 2025.
For the Wolverines, after a tough stretch in November and December, a more favourable schedule was on the horizon for January. But that got off to a bumpy start as they lost to the last place team in the West Division, Swan Valley Stampeders, 6-2 and 5-2 on consecutive nights. Not they come into tonight’s game on a three game losing streak.
The Wolverines sit tied with the Virden Oil Capitals for fourth in the West Division with 24 points, but is losing out on the tiebreaker at the moment. Swan Valley is just four points back of the two teams.
The Blizzard have crawled back to within two points of Dauphin for the top spot in the West, but have played four more games.
The Wolverines made a trade before the game, as Rhett Perrin will be playing after being acquired from the Portage Terriers.
Even with a win tonight, the Wolverines will still be unable to tie the season series with the Blizzard, because of a shootout win in October, losing out in any tiebreaker situation in the future, if needed.