The 113th Grey Cup brings an unexpected Seattle thread to Calgary on Sunday, with the Edmonton Elks and Montreal Alouettes meeting for the Canadian championship and three former Seahawks connections spread across the rosters.
For Joel Dublanko, the matchup is a long way from Aberdeen, Washington, where he grew up, and from Seattle’s preseason roster in 2022. He entered this season as the top Canadian draft pick in 2024 and has turned into a disruptive piece, piling up a couple of sacks, fumble recoveries and an interception in 2026. That is the kind of production that gets noticed on a championship stage, even if the Seahawks never carried him onto a regular-season field.
The same is true for Sutherland, who signed with Seattle in 2023 after the club viewed him as a possible UDFA gem, then moved through the practice squad, an injury settlement, the New York Giants and the Las Vegas Raiders before landing with the Montreal Alouettes. He became Montreal’s Most Outstanding Rookie for his special teams work and finished among the CFL leaders in special teams tackles, which explains why he is back in a game this big. Pier-Olivier Lestage followed a different route but landed in the same place. Seattle signed him as a UDFA out of the University of Montreal in 2021, kept him on the practice squad for a year and released him in 2022, after which he returned home to Montreal, won a Grey Cup in 2023, earned a couple of CFL East All-Star selections and now starts at left guard while sitting among the finalists for Most Outstanding OL.
The wrinkle is that none of the former Seahawks in this game ever appeared in a regular-season contest for Seattle. They were preseason bodies, practice-squad bets or short-term additions who found their real footing elsewhere. Howsare fits that same theme from another angle: he spent two weeks on Seattle’s practice squad during the 2016 regular season without ever getting elevated, then went on to record 49 sacks across eight CFL seasons, including a career-high 13 last season with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats before a midseason trade sent him to Montreal. The Grey Cup stage is where those detours become part of the story rather than footnotes.
That is why Sunday matters beyond the trophy itself. Montreal is trying to answer for last year’s Grey Cup loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, while Edmonton is chasing its first Grey Cup since 2015. Davis Alexander, who starred at Gig Harbor High School and is a native of Gig Harbor, is central to that bid, and the game in Calgary has the feel of a one-day test of how far these careers have traveled since Seattle first had a look. For Dublanko, Sutherland and Lestage, the next whistle is also the point: a chance to turn brief Seattle chapters into a championship result at the 113th Grey Cup.
