By Derek Van Diest – Toronto Sun

Former Edmonton Oilers defenceman Dr. Randy Gregg is spending a lot of his spare time of late at RE/MAX Field in the heart of the river valley.

As the managing director of the Edmonton Riverhawks, Gregg has been working tirelessly to try and get the facility ready for the upcoming West Coast League season, which is a wooden-bat collegiate circuit that operates in the summer.

Dr. Randy Gregg and Edmonton Riverhawks preparing for inaugural season
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The Riverhawks were to play its inaugural season this past summer, but the COVID-19 pandemic made Gregg and his group wait another year.

“All of these young players that are in college, they are wanting to get either drafted or signed, and will be enticed to play summer collegiate baseball,” Gregg said earlier this week. “The Cape Code league is probably the ultimate league on the East Coast, but when it comes to the West, the West Coast League is by far the highest quality league.

“In fact, in 2019, 90 players that were selected in the Major League Draft had played in this league. It’s considerably important for these young players in the summer — not only do they want to get out of Arizona because it’s 120 degrees — but they want to come up and be coached by good quality coaching and get some extra at bats and swings and things like that.”

Gregg won five Stanley Cups with the Oilers during their glory years, but has always had a soft spot for baseball.

“I was probably a better baseball player than hockey player, but by the time I could get a scholarship down in the ’States, I was in medical school,” Gregg said. “And I thought I better not give up medical school. I loved hockey, of course, it’s a great sport, but I also loved baseball.”

The West Coast League is made up of 15 teams divided into three divisions. The South Division comprises of teams in Oregon and Washington, the North is made up from teams in Northern Washington, while the Canada Division has four teams in B.C., along with Edmonton.

“We’re so excited to have our head coach Kelly Stinnett, who played 15 years of Major League Baseball, so he knows what it takes to be at that level,” Gregg said. “And by having a coach with that kind of reputation, we’re getting some young recruits that not only love to come to Edmonton because it’s going to be a lot cooler than it is in the south, but with his reputation, with 9,000 seats here in the city, and the size of Edmonton, we’re going to have a really competitive team and it’s going to be a wonderful experience for our fans to see these young fellas.”

Edmonton will be the biggest market in the league and have the best facility. Gregg and the Riverhawks signed a lease agreement for the Triple-A rated facility and the crew has been hard at work making upgrades to the park.

Along with a new infield turf, the group put up a new scoreboard and made upgrades to the dugouts and club houses.

“It’s amazing. Fans that haven’t been here in a few years are not going to recognize the place with the new turf and everything else going in,” said Riverhawks pitching coach Ethan Elias. “It’s special. I’m really excited to see what we’re going to get and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

“It’s awesome to bring back a really high level of baseball in the West Coast to come play here. It’s going to blow people’s minds the level of talent that’s going to be here, so it’s going to be exciting and I guess the next step is to count the big leaguers we file out of here, that’s kind the goal.”

The Riverhawks replace the Edmonton Prospects as the main tenant at RE/MAX Field. The Prospect, who play in the Western Canadian Baseball League, also a summer wood-bat circuit, are moving to Spruce Grove for the upcoming season.

The Riverhawks’ roster will be made up of college players throughout North America. The 54-games season begins on May 31 and runs through the first week of August.

“We started recruiting players back in June and July,” Elias said. “We have most of our roster already selected, the updates will be coming up here shortly, but it’s an on-going process.

“Guys are going to fall out, guys might get hurt, guys might throw too many innings in the spring for their college teams, respectively, and so we have to adjust, we have to be able to take things as they come and deal with it.”

Either way, the Riverhawks are expecting to field a competitive team out of the gate, using the city and facility as a draw for young college players. Every player in the league has to have at least one year of college eligibility left.

“We’re not going to bring in a guy like Connor McDavid,” Gregg said. “But what we want to do is maybe bring in a young pitcher throwing 95-97 (mph) that is at Arizona State and all of a sudden three or four years from now he’s playing with the Dodgers in Los Angeles and we saw him here in Edmonton.”