Musical chairs -- the run to South Korea starts now

As Terry Jones reports from the Brier it’s time to start the revolving doors among curling’s elite players. 

With the Olympics over and a new multi-year cycle about to start, the dance partners are lining up and looking for new partners.

One of the players involved is likely to be former world champion Nolan Thiessan.

“There’s lots of stuff out there,” said Thiessen, the Edmonton curler who won a Brier and world championship with Kevin Koe in 2010.

“Ben Hebert told me the other day he’s heard rumors that he’s playing with nine different players. So he said it’s going to be a 10-man team he’s going to play on,” laughed Thiessen of the lead from Kevin Martin’s team. 

“But they are all good players so he said‘I’ll at least be on a good team.’ ”

So what do we know? Not much outside of the fact that Carter Ryecroft is hanging up the slider after a pretty darn good career. The other rumours out there with some basis of fact are that John Morris is unlikely to be with his current team, unless he wins the Brier; and that Jeff Stoughton, Kevin Martin and Glenn Howard are unlikely to be around for the next Olympics but will probably play next year.

Of course Stoughton also has a chance to win the Brier this year and if he does, will probably keep his team intact. Financially, it makes sense since there’s government funding as well as sponsorship opportunities.

But the run for South Korea 2018 is well underway