Nic Demski hopes his hard work will finally pay off.
The third year Roughrider receiver will start Thursday’s game against Montreal in place of an injured Rob Bagg.
It’s a chance he isn’t taking for granted.
“It’s an opportunity I’ve been working all offseason for literally my last three years to start here," said Demski. "It feels good to finally do it and now I’ve got to take hold of this opportunity and not look back.”
Demski came to the Riders in 2015 after the team selected him sixth overall in the CFL Draft. Over the last two years with the team he’s scored two touchdowns and earned more than 500 passing yards. This year, Demski hopes to show he can be even better.
“I think I’ve developed," he said. "I came in here pretty raw as a receiver, in university I was definitely a different receiver than I am now. I think I’m a jack of all trades now at the receiver, I played every position throughout our receiving core this training camp.”
With all of that versatility that Demski learned at camp, head coach Chris Jones said he has no problems dropping Demski in Bagg’s place.
“Nic’s a good player he can play a multitude of positions, he could be our lead (punt and kick off) returner if we decided to, and he’s a very, very capable football player.”
Demski said that’s something he’s worked hard at and through camp he aimed to become a more complete football player. In the past, he focused more on his individual play and where he personally needed to be. This year he said he focused on the bigger picture.
“Knowing what you have to do to help other players … that’s something that I’ve really taken more seriously," Demski said."Just getting to know the whole offence instead of just my own assignment."
Also at play for Demski this game is seeing Darian Durant in an Alouettes jersey for the first time. He said training camp helped get some of the weirdness out, and that he’ll be as motivated to beat Durant as Durant will be to beat the Riders.
“I think he’s going to be going out there with the extra chip on his shoulder but at the end of the day that’s what makes people great is having that extra chip on (their) shoulder,” he said before adding the Riders have their own high stakes heading into this season.
“Having the season that we did last year, we’re going to go out there to play with an extra chip on our shoulder as well.”
ODDS AND ENZONES
Chad Owens is expected to miss an extended period of time as he continues to rehab his broken foot. “The x-ray showed that it was about 98% but when he went out the other day he felt a little bit of twinge on it and so we just don’t want to do any further damage,” Jones told reporters Tuesday morning.
On the plus side, Jones said he doesn’t expect Bagg to miss more than a week after rolling his ankle during practice.
The Riders released Joshua Standford and MykeTarvarres Tuesday morning.
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