2026-27 Season Preview: Sudbury Wolves

It's no secret what the theme of the summer was for the Sudbury Wolves.

It all revolved around the pursuit of top prospect Tanner Adams, who only wanted to play in Sudbury, but was property of the Brampton Steelheads as they drafted him before the Wolves were up to the table.

But, in the end (and 15 draft picks later), Adams is now closer to home as he desired, and Sudbury is ready to start what will be a season of building around their new prized young star.

Now, that being said, a lot of key players are coming back to the Wolves for the 2026-27 season. That includes all 10 of their leading scorers from last year, including Jan Chovan, Artyom Gonchar, JC Lemieux, Adam Nemec, Rowan Henderson and more. 

Part of that is because of a large number of trades made ahead of last deadline as the Wolves were in selling mode, but it's still always a very good luck to return a large portion of your top players.

While Sudbury was a below average team last season, each of these returning players have a legit chance to grow, and in the case of Lemieux, having him for a full season will be a huge boost to the offence. 

A big problem of last year's team was in goal, where nobody was really able to lock down a starting job. Even in the playoffs, Paolo Frasca and Bjorn Bronas started games as Sudbury was swept.

Those two seem once again poised to battle for starts in 2026-27, with each having fairly comparable stats throughout preseason. The Wolves will need someone to grab hold of the starter's crease if they want to jump up the standings this year.

But in all, Sudbury will be an interesting young team to keep an eye on, and of course Adams' play will be under the microscope from many across the junior hockey ecosystem.

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