Ameet Pall’s departure for Montreal suggests Stamps screwed up, one way or another

One way or another, the news that the Montreal Alouettes managed to swoop in and steal Ameet Pall is a massive blow for the Calgary Stampeders. Pall was the Stampeders' first-round pick in the 2012 CFL Draft, so losing him to another organization before he'd even played a regular-season game can't be seen as anything other than a negative for Calgary. It's indisputably a failure on one of two fronts: either Pall was a good pick and the Stampeders miscalculated by releasing him rather than assigning him to the injured list, or Pall was a lousy pick and the team screwed up in the draft. Either way, the Stampeders' organization and general manager/head coach John Hufnagel in particular didn't exactly cover themselves with glory here.

Of course, Hufnagel has tried to find ways to justify it. He told the Calgary Sun's Ian Busby that he wasn't expecting Pall to earn a starting roster spot this season, saying "I didn't expect him to beat out Junior Turner or Justin Phillips. I expected him to come in, learn the game and develop into a player." As the Calgary Herald's Allen Cameron writes, too, the team has plenty of Canadian depth on the defensive line and has a number of players injured, so putting Pall on the one-game injured list could have led to salary-cap issues. Pall also reportedly had issues adjusting to playing special teams, something he didn't do in college at Wofford, so if all of Hufnagel's comments about his lack of readiness are accurate (and not just attempts to minimize Pall's loss in retrospect), perhaps releasing him, offering to pay his rehab costs and risking another team claiming him the way Montreal did was the best move the Stamps could make. That would still mean that they made an atrocious draft-day decision, though.

Pall was taken fifth overall, which is incredibly high for a guy who your team winds up considering not worthy of a roster or IR spot. Just take a look at some of the players chosen after him: sixth-overall pick Shamawd Chambers (Edmonton) could shine this year and might turn out to be one of the best players in this whole draft, 12th-overall pick Sam Hurl (taken by Saskatchewan out of the University of Calgary, no less) is already looking like a dominant special teams player and could eventually turn into a defensive star, and 22nd-overall pick Matt Norman (B.C.) looks to be starting at guard for the Lions before returning to school this fall. That's to say nothing of futures picks like Kirby Fabien, Carson Rockhill, Courtney Stephen or Christo Bilukidi, all of whom were available at sixth overall. If Pall never does anything in the CFL and some of those other guys go on to be stars, Stampeders fans may long wonder about what could have been.

Severely messing up their first pick on draft day is actually the explanation that's more favourable to the Stampeders here, though. If Pall goes on to be a star with the Alouettes, this could turn into one of the worst CFL roster decisions in recent history. There's simply no reason to think that a first-round, fifth-overall pick wouldn't be snapped up by another team if left off the roster or the injured list, and the Alouettes were well within their rights (something Hufnagel admitted) to grab Pall. If Pall can't actually play, fine; the Stampeders screwed up draft day horribly, but that's a sunk cost, and at least they're cutting their losses. If he turns into a CFL star, though, this move could haunt Calgary fans for years to come. Either way, Arash Madani's characterization of this as "inexcusable incompetence" from Calgary seems about right.