The St. John’s Edge will have a somewhat new-look lineup when they take on the Windsor Express tonight at Mile One Centre in their first game of 2018.
In fact, the Edge will have experienced a one-third changeover to the roster from the last time they played at Mile One.
The National Basketball League of Canada team has called a press conference this morning to introduce theirs latest additions. The two new players will take the places of centre Rudolphe Joly, who has been released, and guard Colton Ray, who has been placed on injured reserve.
St. John’s hasn’t played since Dec. 19 and hasn’t made a home appearance since Dec. 6. Since the latter date, the team has added forward and former Memorial Sea-Hawks star Vasilije Curcic and American shooting guard Wally Ellenson, both of whom saw some minutes of playing time during a four-game road trip before the long Christmas break.
The team hasn’t identified the latest signings — one team official described the newcomers as “high-end” players — but it is a given one or both will be Canadian. That’s because the release of Joly leaves St. John’s one below the league-mandated quota of five Canadians on a roster.
It’s also a reasonable assumption that the Edge will be adding some size today.
At 6-10, Joly and forward Jarion Henry were the tallest players on the team. But at 210 pounds, Henry isn’t a post player, and even when Joly was with St. John’s, he saw little action, averaging just seven minutes of floor time each 48-minute game. That left most of the inside work to Grandy Glaze, who leads the league in average rebounds per game and shooting percentage. However, the 6-9 Glaze really is a power forward who has been required to take on a more of a centre’s role with the Edge.
Ray, a rookie out of Coastal Carolina University, had been playing slightly more than 10 minutes a game, averaging four points per outing. He is the second player the Edge have placed on injured reserve, joining Canadian forward/guard Jordan Jensen-Whyte, who has been sidelined for the season by a knee injury.
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On Monday night, the Edge announced that “due to circumstances beyond our control,” the Park N Ride service the team had offered during its first four-game home stand of the season will no longer be available.
Word is that the service — which had been provided by a private company — hadn’t proved popular enough with fans and that the contractor chose not to pursue what it felt was a money-losing proposition.
