The Canadian Football League’s free-agent-signing period began on Sunday night but the Stamps aren’t likely to be heavily involved in the frenzy.
“We don’t expect to be extremely active during free agency,” said head coach/general manager John Hufnagel. “Our priorities are to keep the core of players intact that helped us win a championship last season, to find free agents through our U.S. scouting and focus heavily on the Canadian college draft. We’ve managed to extend Brandon Browner’s contract, so we’re very excited about that. He’s one of the premier defensive backs in the CFL. In addition, we’re pleased that Sandro DeAngelis will remain with the club after exploring his NFL options. It was also important to re-sign Markus Howell last week. He’s one of a number of key players we re-signed before free agency started so that we could keep our core intact.”
The Stamps brass acknowledges there are areas on both sides of the ball that need to be strengthened. Coach Huff feels several candidates will emerge during April’s free-agent camp in Florida. Charleston Hughes, Brandon Smith, Saleem Rasheed, Milton Collins, Demetris Summers and Reggie Williams were just some of the players who came out of the Florida camp a year ago.
“You look at successful teams in the Canadian Football League, or any league for that matter, and it’s vital to add some new blood every season regardless of how successful the club was the year before,” said Hufnagel. “As mentioned, we’ll have our nucleus back in 2009 but we’ll also have increased competition and hopefully outstanding depth across the board.”
The Canadian Football League draft takes place on May 2 and the Stampeders own picks in each of the draft’s six rounds, including three selections in Round 4.
“We feel we have very good Canadian talent,” said Hufnagel, “and that’s largely because of the importance this club places on the CFL draft. Whether you’re talking about ratio-changers or depth, Canadians are the foundation of any CFL team. It’s possible to address this area through free agency, but we choose to take a patient, deliberate approach by building through the draft.”