Courtesy Edmonton Journal:

You could call it the renewal of a beautiful friendship, although Ricky Ray and Jason Maas certainly never stopped being friends.

But after a season-and-a-half stumbling around the CFL gulag that is Hamilton and a half season as bench strength in Montreal, Maas is an Edmonton Eskimo once again, back in partnership with Ray.

And, for that matter, Stefan LeFors. They may become an inseparable troika, but it is Ray and Maas that have a history as a duo. So, let the facile cliches flow. I mean, depending on your sensibility, Ray and Maas are, what …?

Starter and closer?

Good cop, bad cop?

Fire and ice?

Butch and Sundance?

Ray’s yin to Maas’s bang-shang-a-lang?

“Perfect professionalism,” offered big ol’ Dan Comiskey, the six-foot-four, 310-pound offensive lineman who is entering his 17th CFL season. “If you look at the relationship they had in 2005, obviously there were times when one of them faltered and the other one stepped in and, well, all sorts of things happened.

“But there was never a time where the guy sitting on the bench was wanting the other guy to fail.

Obviously, he wanted the other guy to be successful, was always trying to do as much as he could in terms of watching the game, watching systems, providing input.

“They just help each other out all the time. That’s the way they always will be. It’s just a great partnership.”

Ahh, yes. The last Grey Cup season ended in glory tempered by some manufactured controversy. When Ray struggled down the stretch, in came Maas in relief in the Western semifinal in Calgary, spewing an angry get-it-together pep talk to his teammates on the sidelines before leading them to victory.

He reprised that relief role successfully in the Western final against the B.C. Lions.

In the ‘05 championship game, it was all Ray, brilliant in completing 35 of 45 passes for 359 yards and a pair of TDs, the Grey Cup MVP.

And, if all goes according to plan this season, Ray will take every snap — or nearly there — and Maas may spend the season as No. 3 behind Ray and LeFors, who played the final five games last season, taking lumps as he mastered the learning curve.

But such is his no-nonsense commitment to team — and teammates — that Maas’s return has veteran Eskimos, including Ray, looking forward to training camp with as much enthusiasm as if the 33-year-old Maas were a hotshot straight out of college.

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