TORONTO

Plenty of CFL personnel grumbled last season that there wasn't enough good Canadian talent to go around. Draft rule changes decreased last year's prospect pool, and the 30 new jobs for Canucks that were created when the Ottawa RedBlacks joined the league spread the talent out too much.

After watching the players that were on display over the weekend at the CFL combine, teams will have no trouble replenishing their Canadian talent this year.

It stood to reason that the quality of this year's draft class would be better due to its bigger size and the addition of more NCAA players, but this year's top 50 prospects went above and beyond. Records fell all over the place, and talent evaluators left the University of Toronto on Sunday afternoon with smiles on their faces knowing there will be plenty of prized picks available when the draft is held May 12.

“Without a doubt,” Winnipeg Blue Bombers general manager Kyle Walters said after the on-field testing under the bubble at Varsity Stadium. “That's the word, and with every positional group that came through here (Sunday) there were multiple players who made good impressions.

“There was no clear cut 'This is the guy,' but there were a lot of football players here. It's good. It's good for our league.”

Need an offensive lineman? Calgary's Sukh Chung was a force along the line of scrimmage, preventing most of the snorting defensive lineman he lined up against from getting to the imaginary quarterback.

“If they watch the film from the one-on-ones and my numbers, I believe I showed my talents and I can be a high-round draft pick,” said Chung, the CFL's seventh ranked prospect.

Laval's Danny Groulx and Calgary's Sean McEwen also performed well, as did Michigan State's James Bodanis.

Is receiver a position that requires the most attention on your team? Manitoba's Nic Demski left little doubt that he's the top pass catcher in this year's class. The fifth ranked prospect tested well, and he showed off good hands during the drills. One CFL scout said Demski had the most to prove going into the weekend, and he knew it.

“Even after the interviews that's how I felt,” Demski said. “It wasn't that they weren't sure. They saw my film, and they knew I was a good player, but they wanted to see me run. I got the same question in every interview: What's your 40 time going to be? I met it. I said low 4.5s. It was 4.55. I'm sure most of them will take that.

“And they said they wanted to see me dominate the one-on-ones, and after my first rep I thought I did that.”

The other star receiver on Sunday was Saint Mary's running back Melvin Abankwah, who had to perform well at the Toronto regional combine on Thursday just to earn an invitation to the weekend. Just as he did on Thursday, Abankwah blew past defensive backs like they were standing still on Sunday.

Other players raised their draft stock through the testing, which included the 40-yard dash, the shuttle and three-cone drill. The combine's 40 record was broken twice on Sunday, with UNLV running back Shaquille Murray-Lawrence needing just 4.41 seconds to complete the distance despite nursing a sore groin.

Two hours later Regina Rams defensive back Tevaughn Campbell blazed to a time of 4.35 to set the standard in the event, which has been electronically timed only since 2011.

The RedBlacks, thanks to their 2-16 record last season, currently own the first overall pick, and Ottawa general manager Marcel Desjardins said what he saw this weekend cleared things up for him “to an extent” but refused to give any hints about where he might go with his pick.

Between now and the draft, teams will have to determine which of the top talent available will get legitimate NFL opportunities. Offensive linemen Brett Boyko and Alex Mateas, defensive lineman Christian Covington and running back Tyler Varga didn't attend the CFL combine and could all be drafted south of the border in early May. If an NFL team chooses them or signs them to a contract with a decent bonus, CFL teams will look elsewhere in the first round.

“The number one thing is always going to be based on what they do and what their ability is, and then the other factors, like the NFL and how interested are they in coming here, will play into how we stack our board, but it won't go into the grade,” Desjardins said of the players who didn't attend the CFL combine. “So for those guys, they have to do what's the most important for them, and I don't hold it against them by any stretch.”

STOCK SWAP

Players whose stocks rose and fell during the CFL combine over the weekend in Toronto, according to various scouts:

UP

RB Shaquille Murray-Lawrence, UNLV – Runnin' Rebel raced to a record 40 time (for a while), showed great pass protection skills and interviewed well

DB Chris Ackie, Wilfrid Laurier – defensive back/linebacker hybrid was most explosive tester and “won” his last three one-on-ones with receivers on Sunday

OL James Bodanis, Michigan State – the former U of T defensive lineman played only four games in last two years but looked solid in one-on-ones.

DOWN