ROUGHRIDERS GM PROMISES `DIFFERENT' YEAR FOR THE TEAM
Changes and the surrounding curiosity invigorating fans, writes Darrell Davis.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders may not go bowling. They likely won't write their best personal attributes onto recipe cards.
And they probably won't lose their last seven games of the
2024 CFL season.
“Everything's going to be different this year,” said Roughriders general manager Jeremy O'day.
O'day made that comment during a media conference last week while discussing his team's free-agent signings. It was just one remark among many, but it struck a chord because truly, his team is changing and the surrounding curiosity is reinvigorating anyone who pays attention to the Roughriders. Fans who vowed to never return to Mosaic Stadium are renewing their season tickets every day.
There are new players, including high-profile free agents A.J. Ouellette, Jermarcus Hardrick, Jameer Thurman and Malik Carney. A new coaching staff is in place, featuring head coach/ defensive co-ordinator Corey Mace and offensive co-ordinator Marc Mueller.
Like his predecessor, Craig Dickenson, Mace is engaging and enthusiastic. But he's new!
Dickenson had been Saskatchewan's head coach since 2019. He was let go after the 2023 campaign because of back-toback 6-12 seasons, featuring seven-game losing skids that couldn't be stopped by those futile team-bonding sessions at the bowling alley or by listing each player's contributions on index cards.
Knowing changes had to be made and with his new threeyear contract in place, O'day started putting new pieces in place and — voila! — the mood surrounding the Roughriders has changed noticeably.
When training camp opens in mid-may, although some players are returning, much of the personnel and the practice routines will be different. There are only so many ways to conduct a practice, but watching how the coaches and players interact, seeing how the group tries to build a winning culture, is going to be different. And intriguing to watch.
Number 2: A “Clash of the Titans”: used to describe Magic versus Bird, Crosby versus Ovechkin or Yankees versus Red Sox. On Tuesday it was Jennifer Jones versus Rachel Homan in a Scotties Tournament of Hearts round robin game. Homan won 7-5.
Maybe there isn't huge international appeal for the Canadian women's curling championship, but in this country that's a gigantic matchup of former national champions. And it's indicative of the growing interest in women's sports.
While the Scotties dominate the TV schedule until Sunday, there are also intriguing matchups upcoming in the Professional Women's Hockey League. The NBA all-star festivities included players from the WNBA. The best female basketball player of all time, Caitlin Clark from the University of Iowa, gets a highlight package every time she plays.
And Canada's top university teams are holding conference playoffs this week (in men's and women's tournaments) to determine qualifiers for the U Sports finals. Ranked 10th in Canada and perennially contending for a national championship, the University of Regina was scheduled to open its Canada West women's playoffs against Manitoba on Wednesday night in Abbotsford. Number 3: Hooray for NHL commissioner Gary Bettman!
Upon hearing an appeal from Morgan Rielly claiming the Toronto Maple Leafs defender was provoked into cross-checking Ottawa Senators forward Ridly Greig, the commissioner declared the provocation was “utterly irrelevant.”
During the dying seconds of an Ottawa victory, Greig used a slapshot to score into an empty net. Rielly responded with a crosscheck to Greig's head, a vicious move that was “justified” according to his head coach and thousands of pundits claiming the Toronto player was following the sport's unwritten, macho code. Sneered the pundits: “What do you know about hockey?”
We know it's stupid to retaliate for something so meaningless, which is why Rielly's five-game suspension was upheld.
Number 4: Hands up, anyone who didn't watch a single minute of the NFL, NHL or NBA all-star events.
Outside of the respective leagues seeing them as promotional events, where the millionaires gather to swap handshakes and stories, sports fans are starting to see all-star games as meaningless. They used to be important showcases when the superstars couldn't be seen every night on TV.
After watching a hockey player ghost-walk through the skills competitions, as Tampa
Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov did during the NHL'S event in Toronto, or seeing the players refuse to play defence while launching shots from midcourt in a ludicrous 211-186 contest dubbed the “highest-scoring in NBA history,” it looks like the players don't want to be there either.