Ottawa returns to Grey Cup after snowy win over Edmonton.

BACKUP KEY IN WIN

GORD HOLDER OTTAWA • It figured that a guy from Winnipeg would play a key role in the Canadian Football League’s East Division Final on Sunday.

Second-year running back Kienan Lafrance replaced an injured Mossis Madu and slalomed across the snowcovered turf for 157 yards and a touchdown to power the Ottawa Redblacks to a 35-23 victory against the Edmonton Eskimos and a berth in the Grey Cup game at Toronto’s BMO Field on this coming Sunday.

The Redblacks will play their second consecutive CFL championship contest against the Calgary Stampeders, who defeated the B.C. Lions in Sunday’s West Division Final in Calgary.

“You’re not always going to be the man, you’re not always going to be the starter, so you have to kind of accept your role, embrace it and take advantage of it when your time comes,” said Lafrance, a sixth-round draft pick in 2015 from the University of Manitoba who saw special-teams duty in the 2015 Grey Cup game that the Redblacks lost 26-20 to the Eskimos.

“Opportunities like this don’t come around very often, second chances,” he added. “But we have a great squad. We have a very strong defence and very strong offence. Just to have the opportunity to go back as going to be special and I think that the guys returning for it have that hunger a little bit more.”

Lafrance didn’t do it himself, of course. Quarterback Henry Burris threw firsthalf touchdown passes to Greg Ellingson and Khalil Paden and the defence kept the Eskimos’ offence in check long enough for the Redblacks to build a substantial lead and to protect it when things got a little discombobulated in the second half of a contest better suited to snowballs.

The touchdown pass to Paden and a two-point convert on a run by Lafrance put the Redblacks up 17-3 in the first half, and the advantage grew again when Tristan Jackson raced through the heart of the Eskimos’ puntcover team for a 75-yard touchdown in the third quarter. With another twopoint convert on a pass to Patrick Lavoie, it was 25-3.

It didn’t stay that way for long, though. A long kickoff return by Shakir Bell and a spectacular 33-yard run by John White helped set up an Eskimos touchdown on a five-yard throw from quarterback Mike Reilly to Adarius Bowman. With the one-point convert by Sean Whyte, the score was 25-10.

Things got interesting early in the fourth quarter. On second-and-short from somewhere near the Redblacks’ 45-yard line — with snow accumulating everywhere, it was frequently hard to tell — Burris fumbled the snap and the Eskimos’ Deon Lacey recovered.