The Nickel City Midget AAA Sons needed to help themselves and receive some help in order to overtake the Timmins Majors for first-round playoff home-ice advantage.

Neither happened as regular-season play wrapped up in the Great North Midget League. The Sons and Wolves travelled to Little Current on Feb. 2, as Sudbury staged a home game at the Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands Recreational Centre for the second time this year.

The Nickel Capital Wolves will walk away with a split on the Island, after stopping Nickel City 5-1, with rookie Owen Fransen setting the tone with a pair of first period goals.

Dylan Callaghan, Eric Paquette and Steven Green also scored for Sudbury, with Michael Michel managing to sneak home the only puck that would elude Jean-Marc Desormeaux in this contest.

The win left the Nickel Capital Wolves with a record of 26-6-0-2 (54 points), safely nestled into second place between the Soo North Stars (65 pts) and Kapuskasing Flyers (50 pts).

Sudbury will open the post-season with a quarter-final series against the New Liskeard Cubs, playing host to games on Feb. 9 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 10 at 3 p.m. — both at the Gerry McCrory Countryside Sports Complex.

As for Nickel City, coach Joel Whissell and company made the trek to Sault Ste Marie on Feb. 5 in order to dispute their 34th and final game, losing 4-1 in a match with nothing at stake that saw only one minor penalty assessed.

Goals by Ryan Vendramin, Anthony Stefano, Cody Caron and Jaron Rowe were more than enough to offset a tally from Alex Forget as the Sons finished fifth with a record of 14-18-0-2, four points behind the Timmins Majors.

As such, the Majors will welcome the Sons to Timmins on Feb. 9 and Feb. 10, with the best of five affair returning to Chelmsford the following weekend.

Though they rank behind the Majors, Nickel City will enter the playoff series knowing they emerged victorious in three of the four regular-season meetings between the teams, dropping only a 4-1 decision in December to Timmins.

The Majors, meanwhile, did what needed to be done on Feb. 1, bouncing the North Bay Trappers 9-4 at home. The remaining QF series will pit Sault Ste Marie (32-1-0-1) against Kirkland Lake (2-32-0-0) while Kapuskasing (24-8-0-2) and North Bay (14-19-0-1) also go toe to toe.