Preview: First place Alouettes battle second place Elks on Saturday

The Montreal Alouettes will host the Edmonton Elks at Percival Molson Stadium on Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m. ET, in what most CFL fans are billing the game of the year to this point.

The Als head into this game with the best record in the CFL at 7-1-0 while the Elks are second at 6-2-0. Edmonton beat Montreal at home in overtime earlier this year. This will be the second and last clash between the two old rivals.

A banged up defence:

The Als will be forced to make lots of changes heading into this game, especially on defence. Four players who started during last week's win in Ottawa will be held out on Saturday.

Defensive tackle Mustafa Johnson, defensive end TJ Guy, linebackers Geoff Cantin-Arku and Najee Murray will all be out. Wesley Sutton, who was a late scratch last week, will miss a second consecutive game.

"We've got 70-odd players here in our building," head coach Jason Maas explained. "For every single one of them, the expectation is that they can be on our 45-man roster and play at a high level. That is the least of our concerns. It's just about filling that 45."

Look for rookie Decarius Hawthorne to jump into the lineup for Johnson, while David Perales will suit up for Guy. Micah Awe will jump into the starting lineup for Cantin-Arku and Gemon Green will take Murray's spot at strong-side linebacker. Faion Hicks will replace Sutton.

Travis Theis chasing Alouettes history:

Earlier this week, the CFL announced that Davis Alexander and Travis Theis were the top two players of the month in the league.

Theis heads into this game having scored a rushing touchdown in six consecutive games. If he scores a major on Saturday, he'll tie Mike Pringle and Ben Cahoon's franchise record for most consecutive games with a score.

"We've created a total balance," Alexander said of the offence. "With (Theis), he doesn't have a weakness. He's so good in protection, he cares more about protection than running the ball. He's so good (catching passes) out of the backfield. It seems like he knows when to get on his checkdowns and he knows when I'm in a little bit of trouble. He's impossible to tackle. His physical ability is impressive in itself. He's a special dude and a football guy."

Strong at home:

The Alouettes have yet to suffer a loss at home this year, as they're off to a 4-0-0 start at Percival Molson Stadium. The four wins this year already match the total number of wins they had in Montreal in 2025.

"I've been extremely happy with (the way we've played at home)," Maas explained. "You look at the last three years, the place to improve was the way we were playing at home. We've given up some games at home. They've been really tight games, but we've given them up. We had been much better on the road. We're better at home and that's an awesome thing. I know Montreal in the past – when they were in their heyday – they were extremely tough to beat at home. We'd love to keep that going."

The Als have a +29-point differential at home so far. They've scored at least 31 points in each of those four games.

Familiar faces return to Montreal:

The Elks offence will have an Alouettes-flavour to it on Saturday, as former Als Cody Fajardo, Austin Mack and Kaion Julien-Grant will all face their former teams.

Fajardo and Julien-Grant have already faced the Alouettes in Montreal, but this will be the first time Mack gets to return to the city where he made his CFL debut.

The Alouettes' offence has been explosive all year. They'll run into an Elks defence that leads the league in fewest offensive points allowed per game heading into Week 10.

Edmonton allows 24.9 offensive points per game, while the Alouettes are second in that category at 25.6.

"They've done a great job so far," Maas said of the Elks. "We've played them once before in their building. We know what they're about and they've done an extremely good job. We know we're going to have to play four quarters…We're really just focused on ourselves. I thought we had a great week of practice with the guys that are practicing."

The Alouettes offence are first in net offence (450.6 yards), first downs (199), average yards per play (7.96).