The officials working tonight’s CFL game at Mosaic Stadium should keep their eyes on Peter Dyakowski.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders guard is playing his first game against his former team, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and Dyakowski has admitted he plans to target several of his erstwhile teammates.
“Target for hugs,” the affable Dyakowski deadpanned in advance of tonight’s clash (8 p.m., CKRM, TSN).
“On the field, I’ll approach it as I would any other game. Whenever you’re playing against a buddy, you might have a comment or two in between the plays or during the play. But it’s all part of the fun.”
Dyakowski spent the first 10 seasons of his career with the Tiger-Cats, who selected him in the second round (11th overall) of the 2006 CFL draft out of Louisiana State University.
The 6-foot-5, 320-pound product of Vancouver was Hamilton’s nominee for the award as the CFL’s most outstanding offensive lineman in 2011, one season before he was named an East Division all-star.
His football accomplishments are equalled by his intelligence — he won the title of Canada’s smartest person during a CBC television contest in 2012 and appeared on an episode of Jeopardy! in 2014 — and by his sense of humour.
But Dyakowski likely wasn’t laughing on Feb. 16, when the Tiger-Cats released him, presumably as part of a cost-cutting youth movement. The 33-year-old signed with the Toronto Argonauts later that day.
He never made it to the Argos’ training camp, though; on May 27, Toronto traded him to the Roughriders for receiver Armanti Edwards.
Three days later in Saskatoon, wearing a bemused look on his face, Dyakowski told reporters covering Saskatchewan’s training camp that he had left a family barbecue to take the call telling him that he had been traded.
Exactly six weeks after the deal, Dyakowski gets to sink his teeth into the Tiger-Cats.
“I’m looking forward to it; it’s going to be fun,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of good friends on the other side of the football …
“It’s not so remarkable, though. If you play long enough in the CFL, you end up playing against half of your teammates down the road and you end up playing with half of your opponents. This is the same thing, just on a larger scale.”
He’s right, of course. Player movement within the CFL means there are weekly reunions within the league.
The game tonight features former Tiger-Cats (including Dyakowski, punter Josh Bartel, defensive back Ed Gainey, defensive tackle Linden Gaydosh, quarterback Kevin Glenn and receiver Bakari Grant) facing ex-Roughriders (such as defensive ends Justin Capicciotti and John Chick, offensive tackle Xavier Fulton and long-snapper Aaron Crawford).
That list doesn’t include people like Roughriders defensive backs coach Jason Shivers, who played for Hamilton, or Tiger-Cats head coach Kent Austin, who played for and coached Saskatchewan.
While Dyakowski said observers tonight “aren’t going to see me wiping away any tears or anything” when he meets up with old teammates and coaches, Roughriders guard Brendon LaBatte does expect his linemate has something in store for the team and the coach that cast him aside.
“I’m sure Peter’s got a little extra motivation going just from the way things went down,” LaBatte said. “But in the same sense, he’s a 150-game pro, so I can’t see it really getting him off his game. I’m sure he’s going to approach it just like he would any other game.
“I wouldn’t really expect Peter to get any extra emotion or anything going because he hasn’t shown that that’s his style.”
Dyakowski admitted tonight’s contest won’t be a regular game for him — but only because he thinks every game is special. Anything less than his usual exertion of energy and effort will result in a sub-par performance.
“I want to make sure I put a really good game on the field and don’t leave any of those plays hanging out that I’m going to wish I’d done better the next day,” he said. “But there is a bit of something because I spent 10 years in Hamilton.
“It might be odd when I go out for the first time and I’m looking at a whole line of guys in what would have been my old jersey and I’m in the green and white. But after a full training camp, two pre-season games and two regular-season games, I don’t feel out of place.”
In fact, Dyakowski feels right at home in Regina. He got to spend a decade with one team in a business where that’s a rarity and now, quite simply, he’s in a new place.
“Now I get to be somewhere else that’s also fantastic, if not more so,” he said. “Look around: It’s the No. 1 stadium in the country. I’ve got a great organization that has got my back here. So for me to be on the field having fun, playing the game I love and being able to do so at a high level and perform and produce the way I’d like to, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s impossible for me to be enjoying myself as much as I am and to be second-guessing the course that brought me here. If I’m enjoying myself, then this is the right place to be.”
