‘Every game is crucial’ for Alouettes as team starts home stint against Tiger-Cats

MONTREAL — The Montreal Alouettes are heading into Saturday’s game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats with some rare momentum.

The Alouettes (3-6) handed the Winnipeg Blue Bombers their first loss of the season last week and now have a four-game home stint ahead of them. The Alouettes will finish the season with six of their last nine games at Percival Molson Stadium.

Danny Maciocia’s team hasn’t won back-to-back games this year. While a win against Hamilton (3-6) on Saturday would be a great kickstarter for the home stretch, Maciocia knows his team needs to perform consistently at home. Montreal is 1-2 at Percival Molson Stadium this year.

"Every game is going to be crucial from this point on, all nine," Montreal's head coach and interim general manager said. “Yes, it's important. Yes, we have to play our best football game. Yes, we got to try to get on a little bit of a run here but I'd rather break it down as a short-term goal than start looking at a long-term picture.

“Six out of nine sounds nice … but what are you going to do when you're playing at home during those six contests? You’ve got to find a way to win. Last year, we weren't able to do so. We were a sub .500 team at home so that's the reason why we go out there and practice."

The Tiger-Cats are also heading to Montreal on the highs of a win last week. Orlondo Steinauer’s team scored 17 points in the fourth quarter to down the visiting Toronto Argonauts 34-27.

“It took us a few weeks to get the hang of this,” said Ticats running back Sean-Thomas Erlington about playing a strong fourth quarter. “It’s obviously something we needed to get better at and we were able to show people, show ourselves, that we were capable of doing that, finishing games.

"We’ve just