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June 24, 2017

About Last Night . . .

Marquay McDaniel during the 2017 season-opener in Ottawa (Photo by Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

Here’s a closer look at Friday’s 31-31 draw in Ottawa.

All for knot: From October of 2009 to July of 2016, the Stampeders went 113 games without playing a single tie.

Now, in less than a year, they’ve had two ties. Against the same opponent. At the same stadium.

In 63 games over the course of 55 years against three different franchises, the Stamps never had a tie against an Ottawa team. Now they have two sister-kissers against the RedBlacks in the past three games.

It’s the first time in franchise history the Stamps have come home with ties from back-to-back trips to the same city. In 1963, Calgary and Saskatchewan tied in consecutive meetings with one game being played at McMahon Stadium and the other at Regina’s Taylor Field.

Since June 28, 2007, there have been just four regular-season ties in the CFL and the Stamps have been involved in all of them – in 2007 against BC, in 2009 against Saskatchewan and now the back-to-back draws with Ottawa.

When it comes to openers, this is the fourth time the Stamps have kicked the season off with a tie. The previous instances were in 1960 against Saskatchewan, in 1982 against Toronto and in 1990 against BC.

And if that’s not all weird enough, the past four meetings in Ontario between the Stamps and RedBlacks – three at Ottawa’s TD Place Stadium as well as last year’s Grey Cup at BMO Field in Toronto – have all gone to overtime.

One last point – a total of 47 players appeared in both of the Calgary-Ottawa ties over the past two seasons and, naturally, all of them have a personal 0-0-2 record in those contests including three players – Taylor Reed, Drew Tate and Adam Berger – who suited up for Calgary in the first game and for Ottawa in the second.

Double digits for Quay: Stampeders slotback Marquay McDaniel started the season with a bang as he hauled in 10 passes for 114 yards in Ottawa.

Since the start of the 2013 season, McDaniel is responsible for all three games in which a Calgary player had made at least 10 receptions. He had 12 catches against BC on Nov. 7, 2014, and victimized the Lions again on Aug. 19 of last year with a 10-catch performance.

Besides McDaniel, the most recent Calgary receiver to reach double figures in receptions was Nik Lewis, who accomplished the feat against Montreal on Canada Day back in 2012.

Milestone watch: With his 376 passing yards against the RedBlacks, Stamps signal-caller Bo Levi Mitchell surpassed the 15,000-yard mark for his career.

Only four other quarterbacks – Henry Burris, Doug Flutie, Peter Liske and Jeff Garcia – have racked up 15,000 passing yards in a Stamps uniform.

Meanwhile, Rene Paredes booted a couple of extra points to reach 257 in his career, which has been spent entirely in Calgary. He passes Sandro DeAngelis (256 converts) for fourth place on the Stamps’ all-time list.