For Hamilton Tiger-Cats defensive back Stavros Katsantonis, the team’s 11-7 record and first-place finish atop the East Division starts with one man.
“First and foremost with Ted,” he said this week, of the late Ted Goveia, the team’s general manager who passed away from cancer in September. “[You have] got to give the hats off to the late Ted for helping build this team and bringing the right guys into this building.”
Katsantonis, a UBC product, recalled his first interaction with Goveia, which took place at last year’s Grey Cup in Vancouver.
“He’s with Winnipeg at the time, so he’s still focused on winning,” he said. “He just pulled me to the side…and just said he really appreciated who I was as a player and that the type of game I play.”
Just weeks later, Goveia became the Hamilton general manager and the two would form a strong connection.
“He’s just a super down-to-Earth guy,” Katsantonis said. “He’s got a story for just about everything – whether that’s youth sports, football scouting, going down to NFL camps, different CFL stories. You name it, he’s got a story for it.”
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Quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell allowed that he struggles to articulate how he feels about Goveia ahead of the Eastern Final versus the Montreal Alouettes on Saturday.
“Do you say it’s motivation, because then that honestly kind of feels selfish, right?” he asked, if winning for Goveia was a factor this week. “I would say that his [total] impact is still unknown at this point, but it’s been huge.”
Katsantonis and Mitchell raved about the culture that Goveia helped enhance after he was hired last off-season.
“Putting in the work, trust in the process, the grind, all the cliches that everyone says that come with building a championship-calibre team,” Katsantonis said. “That guy was instrumental in the turnaround this season.”
Mitchell added that the team also tries to emulate Scott Milanovich, the veteran CFL coach in his second campaign at the helm in Steel Town.
“Scott is just all ball all the time,” Mitchell said. “He’s a guy that walks by [in] the hallway and is going to say, ‘Hey,’ but his mind is on football at all times. Every time you see him, every time you’re in a meeting, it gives you that understanding that that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
Mitchell said there were growing pains when he and Milanovich were initially paired together during the 2023 season as two established pros who had had success elsewhere.
“There’s the playoff game where he benches me,” Mitchell said, referring to the 2023 East Semifinal where he started 1-for-6 with an interception before Matthew Shiltz took over. Milanovich was calling the plays for the Ticats at the time as a senior assistant coach. The Als won 27-12 and would hoist the Grey Cup two weeks later.
“But it was out of…what he thought was best as a team. …He showed me film and showed me the reason why he was doing it. At the time, coming off a broken ankle and really not feeling like I could take off and run, and him showing me that to beat Montreal…that that’s what it was going to take.”
He appreciated the teaching moment, even if it stung.
“He does a hell of a job understanding what his quarterback’s good at, understanding what his offence is good at, and just developing guys,” Mitchell said.
That relationship is crucial to the Ticats’ chances at ending the league’s longest Grey Cup drought. Hamilton hasn’t hoisted the trophy since 1999.
“There’s times where I try to force the ball, and he can say, ‘Hey, take this [throw],’” Mitchell said. “‘Let this guy break a tackle, get a first down’…that’s just the beauty of playing for a guy that has coached so many great quarterbacks…you look at his track record, he’s never not had an amazing quarterback. So, that’s not luck. That’s not an accident.”
Montreal has a talented, record-setting quarterback of their own in Davis Alexander, who is 12-0 under centre – the longest winning streak to start a CFL career in league history.
The two have a friendly relationship, Mitchell the two-time Grey Cup Champion and Most Outstanding Player (2014, 2018) and Alexander trying to follow in his footsteps. Mitchell is trying to go to his fifth Grey Cup and first since he moved on from the Calgary Stampeders three years ago, but doesn’t mind giving advice to someone standing in his way.
“When he got injured, [I] just [told] him, ‘Hey, keep your head up but be smart,’” Mitchell said of his advice via text to the Portland State University product after Alexander hurt his hamstring in August.
“‘Get your body right, because whenever you come back in, you [have] got to lead your team’…it’s been impressive to see what he’s been doing.”
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