Bring Out Your Dead

Another nail went into the coffin of the Alberta rink on Tuesday night when James Grattan handed Kevin Martin and his rink their fourth loss. Barring a late run that will mean the Olympic gold medalists will be champions only in the Patch.

John MacKinnon of the Edmonton Journal summed it up in a great piece on the rink's struggles:

Kevin Martin’s long-awaited hometown Brier has unravelled into a full-blown disaster, as inexplicable as it has been painful for the 46-year-old skip. The Old Bear has been vulnerable early and often at the 2013 Tim Hortons Brier and his opponents have pounced. James Grattan of New Brunswick, his Brier history distinguished mostly by the number of times (nine before this year) he has been part of also-ran teams, was just the most recent of Martin’s predators on Tuesday. Grattan, 38, nailed alast-rock tap back to beat Martin 6-5.

Paul Wiecek also dealt with the Martin slide and even dealt with what appears to be some dissention in the ranks.

Martin, who was offended last weekend when it was suggested that perhaps his team wasn't getting along on the ice, wasn't so defiant when he was asked again Tuesday if the team's chemistry wasn't working.  

"I think it's safe to say that right noweverything isn't working, from A to Z."  

Martin had a one-word answer when he was askedwhat he thought of his team's playoff chances:

"Dead."

Actually, teams with four losses get into the playoffs quite often, but of course that would mean running the table and the way the Alberta rink is playing, that would be a tough proposition. However, as John Morris said, there’s also the small matter of the opposition who seem to rise to the occasion to beat up on Martin:

“If you look at the stats, how did Quebec and Northern Ontario and New Brunswick play against us?” Morris said. “Was it not 100 per cent? 

“When you’re playing guys doing that ...”

Morris also came to the defense of his skip, who seems to be struggling mightily with those new CCA-owned rocks.

“I’ll tell you what, when I wasn’t playing with Kevin Martin, I wanted to kick Kevin Martin’s butt,” said Morris, who was an Ottawa-based skip for several years before he relocated to Alberta. “And I’m sure every other team here wants to kick his butt. “He’s won a lot of curling games throughout his whole life. When you’re on top and when you’re winning, guys want to knock you off.  They’ve wanted to for several years with our team, and we’ve been able to hold our ground. Now, it just seems we’ve fallen just a hair and the other teams are ... again, they just played 95 per cent against us again. 

“You need to get a couple of misses in a game to capitalize and we’re not getting those.”

Martin on the brink

Stunning. Surprising. Shocking.

What else is there to say about the performance so far of the Alberta rink. At 1-3, the team is now officially on the ropes and in danger of dropping out of the race for a playoff spot.

That certainly wasn’t lost on third John Morris, who offered up a handful of clichés to the Edmonton Journal’s Norm Cowley to paint the picture.

“We’re on the brink. We’re right on the edge of the old iceberg. We’re almost done,” said Alberta third John Morris. “We pretty much can’t afford to lose another game because our last game is against Ontario (Glenn Howard) and we know that’s going to be a battle. If we can somehow get into that game with only three losses, then we’ve got a sniff.“So we’ve just got tofind a way to turn it around and stay real positive and become the team that we know we can be.”

Alberta got hammered by Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs on Monday afternoon in only seven ends. And, as Terry Jones recounts, it wasn’t pretty.

Martin, John Morris, Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert gagged on another game here Monday to head into Day 4 of the 84th Brier with a 1-3 record and basically in a position where they can’t afford to lose another game if they hope to be around for the weekend.The Alberta team, for the fourth straight game, lost the pre-game draw-to-the-button contest for the hammer and got hammered with three in the first end by the Loyal Order of the Moose, which ran their record to 4-0.It was all there for Martin to get backin the game in the second end when he made a double takeout with his firstrock. But he came back and missed a tap back shot to get three to tie the game3-3. Missed it be a mile to give up a steal of one.

There's no surprise at what the team needs to to and it was left to Jules Owchar

“I don’t know what to say,” said JulesOwchar, Martin’s coach dating back to his junior days. “I’m used to these guys making eight shots in an end, not five. And Kevin’s shot to tie it 3-3 on the second end.... I’ve seen him make so many of those. For him that’s fairly  routine. It’s not the rocks. The 4-7 red rocks on that sheet aren’t great but Benny is shooting those. All the leads are throwing those. The rest of the rocks are good. 

“Now we have to win ‘em all. We have torun it now. There’s a challenge there, that’s for sure. It’s possible. We’ve won more in a row than that before,” he said of the team which won back-to-back Briers in 2008 and 2009 with perfect 13-0 records. 

 Now you wonder how long they can go before they get the same treatment Pat Ryan did in 1987. That year, playing in front of the hometown fans, Ryan stumbled to a 6-5 mark and was booed by the Edmonton curling fans.

Will Martin get booed if he continues to lose? Will the fans give him a break because of past accomplishments?

Right now, he and the boys are still hoping to go on a run and make the playoffs. His next four games are against teams he should beat – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the Territories and PEI. However even if he beats those teams, he’ll at the very least need to go 2-1 against the trio of Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador and Ontario – that’s a tall task.

But this is Alberta and Kevin Martin. They can beat any team, at any point. Playing on the edge of the cliff will certainly be interesting if they can get a string of wins going.  

Martin finally wins, rocks still causing headaches

The Alberta squad finally got into the win column on Sunday at the Brier, taking care of Jean-Michel Menard and the guy with the bandana

When K-Mart was informed by Norm Cowley of the EdmontonJournal of the fact that no team has ever lost its first two games and gone on to win the Brier, he had a succinct reaction:

“It might be time (to change that),” Martin said after finally getting into the win column with a commanding 10-3 seven-end victory over British Columbia’s Andrew Bilesky on Sunday night.“It bodes well going forward. The team just came out with a little different step (Sunday night). Everybody seemed to be in a little better mood, ready to go. I told Jules (Owchar, the team coach) before the game started, ‘This is a different team out here tonight.’

Martin is still not overly confident in his rocks but felt the two he played with on Sunday night were better. And he learned which ones to throw from Glenn Howard, who shared information with his rival.

 “We did know going in that (it) is a pretty good set of rocks,” Martin admitted. “Glenn (Howard) had them earlier and he told me he really liked the 2-8.“That was good, to have agood set to be able to bounce back on.”

Things don’t get any easier for Martin on Monday, when his 1:30 game is against undefeated Northern Ontario. Two losses? OK, but three losses and you start to lose control of your destiny, falling into Kristie Moore territory

Speaking of rocks and Northern Ontario, Brad Jacobs had a few comments on the stones which every player is trying to figure out. Chris O’Leary of the Journal penned a nice piece on them, trying to illustrate the frustration the players are experiencing.

The new curling stones at the 2013 Tim Hortons Brier – the ones with minds of their own that are slower than the skip of the northern Ontario team expects them to be – are quickly becoming a big topic of conversation this week at Rexall Place.

“There’s a couple of pigs out there, is what we call them,” Jacobs said after his team topped Prince Edward Island 10-4 in Sunday’s afternoon draw.“Rocks on that sheet were tricky. I think that’s going tobe a common theme this week is you’re going to hear a lot of the curlers saythat the rocks are tough and they are.” 

And Jacobs said that even scouting the rocks a game ahead, isn’t easy.

“For instance (our) last game, we tried to chart the rocks from that team that was on that sheet before and what they had, compared to what we thought we had? Totally different.“It’s hard for everyone and I guess that’s a good thing.Everyone is on a level playing field that way.”

Donna Spencer of the Canadian Press also inked a story on the rocks, with Menard commenting that there is usually one oddball on every sheet.

"There's at least one rock per sheet that is way different than the others," he stated."You've got to stay big-time focused andcommunicate well with your teammates on which rocks they were throwing. As askip, it's very exhausting mentally."The CCA tested the new rocks first at anOttawa curling club and then at the Canadian junior curling championships lastmonth in Fort McMurray, according to the CCA's director of championshipservices."They were fast and swingy," DannyLamoureux said. "These are very good stones and (it was) recommended byour top icemakers that we make this deal."Every set in the world reactsdifferently. There's not a set in the world that are identical. I think one ofthe issues is, no one has ever seen these before. They don't have a book on them."

That’s right! These are not the MCA stones that every significant curler had a read one, knew which ones matched up and which pairs to throw. Now the guys have to learn all over. It’s just a shame that it has to happen for the first time at the biggest curling event in the world.

Johnny Mo had a good reason for not stopping

So a correction on the stories circulating that John Morris didn't stop for reporters yesterday after his team's loss to Manitoba. He actually had a good reason for not stopping: no one asked him to.

Seems the Brier has adopted the Scotties system of submitting a request with the media organizers for players with whom they wish to talk. And no one asked to speak to Morris. Simple as that.

I've found that over the years while John wears his emotions outwardly, he will always stop and chat with reporters if he's asked.

Martin, Stoughton provide the fireworks

Nothing like an extra-end pick to get the Brier started with some fireworks.

Saturday night’s opener between Jeff Stoughton and Kevin Martin didn’t disappoint, at least not from a reactionary standpoint.

After Johnny Mo missed both his last shots and Martin’s first one picked, you knew the Alberta boys wouldn’t be skipping to the dressing room.

According to the Edmonton Sun, Morris, avoided saying something he might regret after the game but at least kept his shirt intact.

Morris had no comment about the loss as he breezed past the mix zone to the dressing room after shooting 80% during the opener. 

 And Marc Kennedy threw Morris under the bus was blunt in his assessment of the final end.

“We didn't leave Kevin much after John missed those,” said Kennedy of the two nose hits, which took Alberta from beingin total control after two terrific ticks by lead Ben Hebert.

Even the skipper, who will normally calm down and face the scribblers needed a moment to cool down. . .  or maybe unzip, said the Winnipeg Free Press’s Paul Wiecek.

The loss infuriated Martin, who stormed off the ice muttering under and blowing right past waiting reporters, before returning moments laterto face the music.It was uncharacteristic behavior for the normally even-keeled Martin, who laughed off his behaviour by saying that he simply needed to urinate after the game before he faced reporters. Martin did admit, however, that the loss was upsetting, coming as it did after what he said was a pick onhis extra-end miss. 

"You hate to give one away early, you know. That'sall," said Martin. "But like I say, it's a long week."

Meanwhile the new CCA-owned rocks weren’t being met with much happiness.

As the Edmonton Journal’s Chris O’Leary pointed out, these aren’t the old MCA rocks the boys are playing with any more.

The curlers at this year’s Brier are using the same stones that will be put in play at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The Brier is only the second event where the Canadian Curling Association has used the new stones. They were introduced at the national junior championship last month in Fort McMurray.

Nova Scotia’s Paul Flemming was one of several to offer up a comment on the stones and what to do about them while Brock Virtue of Saskatchewan said it may be a while before the curlers get a handle on them

“We were struggling with the rocks and the ice; more so with the rocks,” he said. “We had three: The six, seven and eight, we were really struggling with them. Our releases were pretty good for the most part, but it may require a late-night practice after that second draw (on Saturday night).”While Virtue was able to steer his Saskatchewan team to a tight 4-3 win in 11 ends, he said he and his teammates were adjusting to the new rocks, as well. 

“It’s newfor me because it’s our first Brier, so they’re all new stones,” he said. “There’s definitely a learning curve for the players and also there’s going to be a break-in period for the stones.”

The new stones are actually owned by the CCA, something the governing body hasn’t done in a long time, according to Danny Lamoureux.

"We hadn’t owned rocks in a long, long time,” Lamoureux said. “We just rented them off of associations like the Manitoba Curling Association, or other people who owned good sets.” 

Lamoureuxbought the stones used in Vancouver in 2010 and got an interesting offer from their manufacturer last year. 

“Kays Bonspiel Company in Scotland called us,” he said. “So they’d take the Vancouver stones back and sell them to a curling club or another nation and give us these new stones that were specked exactly for next year’s Olympics.” 

Lamoureux jumped at the opportunity.

“Eventually,you have to have new stones, because stones do wear out if they’re used long enough,” he said. “They (the new stones) do have a shelf life of 50 years if they’re taken care of properly.”

Of course judging by the field in this year's event, you wonder if the rocks or the curlers will wear out first.

Stoughton expecting eventual performance slip

Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton is heading to his 10^th Brier and, he fully admits, that time is not on his side. The 48-year-old toldthe Edmonton Journal’s Curtis Stock (who was obviously paid off by Stoughton for the “10 years younger” line) he figures that by the time he hits 58, he’ll start to notice a slip in his performance. 

Um, Jeff, they have pills for that now you know? Oh, his curling performance.

“I’m 49 and in the twilight of my career,” said Stoughton, who looks 10 years younger.“I’m not going to be playing at this level for another 10 years. I know that,” said the Manitoba skip, who is trying to join Ernie Richardson, Randy Ferbey and Kevin Martin as four-time Brier winners as the Canadian men’s curling championship descends on Edmonton’s Rexall Place March 2-10.“I think that’s probably why the 2011 Brier was so special,” he said of his 8-6 victory over Ontario’s Glenn Howard — Stoughton’s first Brier win in a dozen years.The Winnipeg native, who curls out of that city’s Charleswood Curling Club, won his first two Briers in 1996 at Kamloops, B.C. — where he defeated Alberta’s Kevin Martin in the final — and again in 1999 at Edmonton.

 ****

Guess you wouldn’t call these guys kissing cousins (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but a nice story by Murray McCormick on cousins Ben Hebert and DJ Kidby, who are playing lead for Alberta and  Saskatchewan respectively at the Brier.

Together the duo is responsible for half the ticket sales in Edmonton, just with extended family picking up seats.

"We have a big family and we both have a ton of people coming from Regina,'' said Hebert, who shared in Saskatchewan men's titles in 2005 and 2006 with Pat Simmons before moving to Martin's team in 2007. "They don't want to show any favouritism. I'm sure that DJ's brothers and sisters are cheering for him, the same as mine are cheering for me. I'm sure that both sides will be cheering for both of us to do well.''

And I’m afraid to think of what the family will do in the Patch. Crash helmets, people. 

Hebert also said that he won’t hold back on his Cus when the two meet up.

"There is no rivalry because I've curled with my cousins for most of my life,'' said Hebert, 29. "When we play their team, it will be just like playing any other team. We're going to try to kick their butts like we do with any other team. It won't change what we're like off the ice either. We're still super-good buddies.''

Kevin Martin admits to dozing off during one-sided games

OK, K-Mart didn’t really say that, but he did admit to Donna“Spinner” Spencer of the Canadian Press that what drives him these days is playing in a close contest with something on the line. And, it’s hard to fault a guy who has won just about all there is to win in curling AND who has is own App.

"I still really enjoy a good tough game, win or lose," Martin said. "It's tough in games that don'e mean a lot, but the big ones. . . those are the games that are fun for me still.
"As long as I really enjoy it, deep down really can't wait to play, I'll play. Once you don't feel like that, your days are done. I haven't got that yet."

  

Martin, of course, will once again skip the Alberta entry to the Brier and for the first time, play in his hometown of Edmonton. 

"I think the Brier is going to be loud, a lot of un and I think the crowd is going to be really into it," Martin said. "It's Canada's biggest party if the Grey Cup's not. The two bigest parties in Canada are the Grey Cup and the Brier."  

No word on whether Martin is considering donning the pads for the Eskimos next season.

Terry Jones also offered up a profile of Martin, reflecting back on what attracted him to the game in his early days. And, believe it or not, it was the smell. Not the odour of Ben Hebert and Marc Kennedy after a game of sweeping, but the inside of the rink.

“You know how it started?” asked the 46-year-old skip.
“The smell. There’s no smell like a curling rink. Especially a small town curling rink. Smaller town the better.
“When you walk into the rink the first thing that hits you is the smell. Fresh pies and hamburgers. A curling rink smell. Hockey rinks don’t smell like that. I loved that curling rink smell.”