Ten questions . . .

1. Whatever did Saskatchewan Roughriders fans do to deserve the pain and suffering to which their favourite CFL team constantly subjects them. Only the Roughies would take a 20-1 lead over the hated Edmonton Eskimos and ultimately lose the game 21-20, which is what happened Friday in the Alberta capital.

2. With a different officiating crew, would the Hamilton Tiger-Cats have beaten the B.C. Lions in Vancouver on Thursday night?

3. If you own the Portland Winter Hawks and you’re going to dump your veteran head coach in mid-July, why don’t you do it in April and allow yourself the extra time to find a successor? Now, with training camp about five weeks away, you’re without a head coach and a director of player personnel. The good news is that your two assistant coaches are signed for another season.

4. If you are Vancouver businessman Tom Gaglardi and you’re heading up River City Hockey Inc., and you are trying, again, to purchase the Kamloops Blazers, why do you allow ex-Blazers president Colin Day to hitch his wagon to your show? During Day’s presidency, funny things happened, like the office manager defrauding the organization of about $1 million. You may recall that Day was forced to resign as president after Loy Hoffbeck, a member of the board of directors, brought it to the board’s attention that Day had been writing cheques to himself from team accounts. The money apparently was repaid but . . .

5. Why did the Blazers’ board of directors decide not to swallow a poison pill? Blazers president Murray Owen announced Wednesday that GM/head coach Dean Clark, assistant GM/assistant coach Shane Zulyniak, assistant coach Andrew Milne and director of marketing Dave Chyzowski had signed new contracts. The Blazers issued a press release announcing the “signing” of the foursome “to three-year contracts which run until the end of the 2009-10 WHL season.” Sources told me that all four contracts were to run for two years, with the team holding an option on a third year, if the franchise wasn’t sold, and that the third year in each contract was to be guaranteed if the franchise was sold. Asked at the time if the contracts, which would be worth more than $1 million in total, were a poison pill, Owen said that he couldn’t say anything and that the wording “was under review.” Gaglardi expressed dismay and called the deals a poison pill. Now a source with knowledge of the situation has told me that the board has reversed its field and has refused to guarantee the third year under any circumstances. That being the case, you’ve got to wonder just how long the current Kamloops coaching staff will remain in place.

6. If you’re Mike Williamson and you’ve got a degree in marketing from the U of Portland, do you take a break from coaching, find work in another field and discover what family life is like during hockey season? Or do you push hard for the job as head coach of the Kootenay Ice?

7. What is the over-under in weeks of general manager Ken Hodge’s remaining shelf life in Portland?

8. When the Providence Bruins already have a head coach (Scott Gordon), why are there so many rumours about Marc Habscheid being named head coach of Boston’s AHL affiliate?

9. The Calgary Flames are having scout Al Tuer relocate from Cowtown to Vernon, B.C. It’s worth pointing out that Glen Cochrane, another NHL scout, works out of Kelowna. When they were players, they didn’t come any tougher than those two hombres, so how much would you have paid to watch those two battle for puck in a corner during the prime of their careers?

10. How many current WHL coaches have spoken with Phoenix Coyotes GM Don Maloney, who is looking for a head coach for the AHL’s San Antonio Rampage?