A Brief History of the Sudbury Wolves’ Jerseys
“Who ever heard of a green wolf?” That is what Sudbury Wolves owner Ken Burgess said a few years after taking control of the team in 1986.
He had a point. But although green wolves may not have been very common in the wild, they certainly were in Sudbury.
Decades before the Wolves joined the Ontario Hockey Association in 1972, it was custom for hockey teams from the community to sport green.
When Sudbury won the Gordon Cup in 1915, which signified hockey supremacy in Northern Ontario, the team wore green and white jerseys. According to Scott Miller, who wrote the book Leading the Pack: 50 Years of Sudbury Wolves History, the decision to sport green owed to the fact that some of the players on that championship team were on a local club with the same colour scheme.
And so began the tradition of wearing green and white jerseys in Sudbury. When clubs began going by the Wolves moniker, it was only natural that they would incorporate green into their uniforms.
Although plenty of Sudbury teams have been called Wolves over the years, including the squad that represented Canada and won gold at the 1938 World Championships, the growling logo with blood dripping from its fangs did not emerge until Sudbury joined the OHA.
While the original emblem was tweaked a few times during the club’s early years on the junior circuit, it was green Wolves that first terrorized the league.
But looking to bring a more realistic looking crest to the fans, and perhaps match the corporate colours of his company Burgess Power Train and Manufacturing, Burgess and the Wolves unveiled new uniforms for the 1988-89 season, ditching the green wolf in favour of grey and adopting blue and white jerseys.
Although some fans, who had grown up watching the green Wolves zip around the ice during the high-flying era that featured Mike Foligno and Ron Duguay, criticized the change from green, Burgess was adamant that the club would win its next championship in the new colours.
While Burgess never realized his dream of seeing the Wolves win a title before passing away in 1998, the team got awfully close when they got within two wins of hoisting the J. Ross Robertson Cup as part of an incredible run in 2007.
Although most of the club’s history has been under the blue banner, there has always been a soft spot for the green, even among opposing fanbases. During the 2010-11 season, I was living in Georgetown, Ontario while I was in graduate school and took every opportunity I could get to see the Wolves when they played the Mississauga Steelheads at the Hersey Centre.
When the playoffs came around and Sudbury took on Mississauga in the second round, I borrowed a vintage green and white Wolves jersey from a friend. Even though I was in enemy territory, I nearly lost track of how many times I got a thumbs up or a compliment on the jersey.
That same year, while I followed the Wolves from afar, the team introduced an alternate jersey that featured a modern take on the logo but ditched the blue, grey, and white in favour of black. The look only lasted a season, but it is still remembered fondly by some fans.
Alex Cimino, a member of the Behind the Bench podcast, happens to be among that sect. He was only 11 years old at the time, but the jerseys made quite the impression on him.
“It was something new and different from what they had worn before,” he recalled recently.
“It was a new colour and when they came out on the ice for the first time with that on, there was a swagger to that team. They played a little harder.”
Although Cimino ranks the classic Wolves logo as one of his favourites, he appreciated that the team was willing to break away from the pack.
The following season, to commemorate the club’s four decades in the OHL, a retro jersey that paid homage to the original green and white crest was worn, a welcome sight for many supporters. But the green did not conjure up any playoff magic that spring. Sudbury was swept in the opening round by the Brampton Battalion.
But since then, the team has not strayed too far from the look made popular by the Burgess family in the late 1980s, while still searching for that elusive championship.
This year, as the club celebrates its 50th anniversary, the team will be donning special jerseys on November 4, 2022, to highlight the milestone. The standard blue, white, and grey will be trimmed with gold and the crest will be emblazoned with the number 50.
While Friday’s sweaters will add a new page to the club’s jersey history, the book is far from finished. A new chapter will be written next season when Sudbury will sport an entirely different uniform. Stay tuned…