Just In Time: Tasker returns from injury for Grey Cup run

Luke Tasker has seen more than a fair share of frustrations throughout his career with the Hamilton Ticats, with Grey Cup and Eastern Final losses being chiefly responsible for the angst.

But none of that has really matched the exasperation that the 28-year-old receiver has been experiencing during the 2019 season. That has been a little more personal.

Generally a bullet-proof kind of guy when it’s come to lengthy stays on the injured list, this season was a different kind of campaign for Tasker, who is feeling like his old self again, just in time for the 107th Grey Cup presented by Shaw.

“I’m just happy to be back when it matters most,” said Tasker, who suited up for only nine regular season games for the Ticats, missing a long, discouraging, portion between mid-August and the end of October.

“I feel really great now and feel comfortable and confident,” he said, looking forward to playing, he hopes, a pivotal role in the Ticats’ mission to end a 20-year championship drought.

That is something Tasker had gotten used to, and we got used to seeing it, too.


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He’d been ‘Mr. Second Down Conversion’ during the previous five seasons in Hamilton, after a rookie year that saw him spotted in just three games, in 2013. With sure hands and super-disciplined route running instincts, he became one of the CFL’s very best receivers, a man that Ticats’ quarterbacks could count on when facing tough, second and long situations.

Playoff and Grey Cup disappointment is one thing. Injury disappointment, for a man who wasn’t really used to watching from the sideline all that much, well, that’s another.

“This year was by far the most injury adversity I’ve faced,” Tasker sighed, chronicling an early-season shoulder ailment and then a pesky hamstring injury that was aggravated during the healing process, forcing him to take a seat for an even longer period of time when it had looked as though he was ready to return.

Through and through, Tasker persevered stoically – “not one time, was he complaining,” said quarterback Dane Evans of his veteran receiver’s mood.

Not that Tasker didn’t feel the pressure of not performing building inside him.

Happy for his teammates, who chugged along just fine without him, the Hamilton offence continuing to perform at a high level, Tasker felt some envy.

“When you’re watching,” he said, “you wish you had the chance to make some of those plays, right?”

“But at the same time you look at the flip side of it. It’s also tough to be out and watch a team struggle, right? It’s hard one way or another. But it’s better this way, I guess, where even when you’re out, you know, the the team is strong, and first in the East and all that.”

After consecutive 1,100 yard-plus seasons, Tasker’s productivity dimmed due his injury time and he finished the regular season with 406 yards on 36 catches, 10 of them coming in the final two games, for 114 yards.

In the Eastern Final, he caught three balls for 32 yards, but fumbled after one of those catches, an occurrence that seemed a bit jarring, since Tasker is known to be one of the better ball protectors in the league.

Perhaps he was still playing his way back to his old self. He was, after all playing a little catch up.

“When you have an injury-free season, by the end of the season, it’s just so second nature,” Tasker said. “You’re just playing. Battling all these injuries, it did take me some time to to sort of get back and feel good. And now I really do.”

As Grey Cup Sunday approaches, almost unbelievably, Luke Tasker might be a bit of an after-thought for some, his injury-shortened season being eclipsed by the MOP campaign of Brandon Banks, and the continued emergence of Bralon Addison, as well as top drawer play by the likes of receivers Jaelon Acklin, and Marcus Tucker.

“I’m just happy to be back when it matters most.”

Luke Tasker

Tasker battled injuries throughout the 2019 season but was back for his team’s Grey Cup run (Dave Chidley/CFL.ca)

But when a guy like Luke Tasker is ready to go, you make room for him, and get him involved so that he can be ready for the biggest game of the year. And that is what Hamilton coach Orlondo Steinauer decided to do.

“We saw it in practice,” said Steinauer, referring to flashes of the player that Tasker has been.

“We wanted him to play a couple of games there towards the end of the year, to see if we he was back to the Luke that we know and we feel like that’s where he’s at right now that’s why he’s in the lineup.”

An already very talented Ticats’ receiving corps gets an enormous boost with Tasker being back and able to do Luke Tasker things.

“He’s the ultimate football player,” said Evans, of the importance of having the native of East Aurora, New York back in top shape. “There’s not one thing on the field he can’t do.”

“In the huddle, it’s like having another quarterback, honestly.”

So the four-time East All-Star and one-time CFL All-Star is ready to do his part to try to exorcise the other frustrations that have cropped up during his time in Hamilton.

The Ticats lost the Grey Cup in 2013, to Saskatchewan. “Everything went wrong,” Tasker said.

In 2014, Hamilton fell in the title game, again, when a punt return touchdown by Banks was brought back on an illegal block call.

A year later, Ottawa beat the Ticats when quarterback Henry Burris fired a bomb down the sideline to receiver Greg Ellingson, a 93-yard touchdown sending the REDBLACKS to the Grey Cup Game with that dagger in the dying moments. “A real, real tough, tough game to lose,” said Tasker.

“A handful of guys have been here for all of that,” lamented Tasker, thinking of the likes of Banks, defensive lineman Ted Laurent, and linebacker Simoni Lawrence, to name a few. “So that energy of being hungry and being focused, I think, has transcended the whole team.”

“We are hungry for it. And we also have held ourselves to what we consider a championship standard the whole season.”

A season that, for Tasker, had been like swimming against the current.

But now, in gear for Grey Cup Sunday, Tasker knows that the injury frustrations he’s dealt with this season won’t mean much, if anything at all.

“Who cares at that point, you know?” he said.

“If the goal that we’ve had from day one is accomplished, then all the hardship and the in-between is just part of the story, part of the journey.”