Provincial roundup: McEwen confident heading into the weekend . . . one more time

It's the best curling team never to make it to the Brier and once again the squad is rolling in the Manitoba playdowns, getting closer to that elusive Purple Heart. 

Paul Wiecek of the Free Press has the update on Mike McEwen who has qualified for weekend play for the sixth consecutive year in Manitoba and appears confident. (Kudos to Wiecek too, for getting the word trepidatious into his lede.)

So, McEwen was asked Friday morning moments after he qualified for the playoffs for a sixth straight year: Any apprehensions about revisiting this icy boulevard of broken dreams once again? 

"Not yet, " said McEwen with a grin. "But ask me again tomorrow."

That one bit of hesitation might because the guy who has knocked him off the last few years is still hanging around. 

It is Stoughton, after all, who authored three of those McEwen defeats in the final -- and that McEwen semi-final loss too. And Stoughton -- an 11-time Manitoba men's champion -- is once again very much a presence again this weekend, having qualified for the playoff round with an 8-4 win over Daley Peters Friday morning. 

But Stoughton has problems of his own coming into today. Stoughton was thrashed 9-3 by former teammate Reid Carruthers in the opening round of the playoffs Friday night and is in a must-win situation heading into this morning, needing to win back-to-back games today to qualify for the Final 4 championship round that begins tonight.

Stoughton, of course, is the last of the Big Three -- along with Glenn Howard and Kevin Martin -- to have a shot at reaching the Brier. Martin, of course, retired and Howard was knocked out of the playdowns in Ontario. The last time there was a Brier without at least one of those guys was 2005. 

Meanwhile, in other parts of the country, gold medallist Brad Jacobs is a perfect 6-0 in Northern Ontario after beating up on a senior curler, that being Al Hackner who is still getting after it. 

Jacobs wrapped up the day with a 6-4 win over Al Hackner (Fort William Curling Club). After falling behind 5-2, Hackner made things close by scoring a single in the eighth end and stealing one in the ninth before Jacobs scored one in the tenth end to seal the win.

In Alberta, former world junior champ Brendan Bottcher will meet Kevin Koe in the A-B final on Saturday night. It might seem as if Bottcher is overmatched against the former Brier champ with his powerhouse team, but that hasn't been the case this year; Bottcher has deafeted Koe twice already this year which gives them some confidence, as Terry Jones explains: 

“Any time you come up against a team you’ve never been able to beat before, it’s different than when you play a team you’ve been able to beat a couple of times recently,” said the young skip who knocked off Edmonton’s Jamie King in the ‘B’ event final 7-3 here Friday evening. 

“Here, we know. We’re playing really well. And we have had a good year. We’ve beaten a lot of those top teams. Koe was one of them. But they’re obviously playing really well this week, too,” said Bottcher. 

And in Ontario, John Epping and Mark Kean tied atop the leaderboard after the round-robin leaving four teams battling in tiebreakers after the perfect combinations of wins and losses occurred behind them. One of those is veteran Wayne Middaugh who joined the Peter Corner rink mid-week after taking in the Super Bowl.

Kean earned top spot overall, thanks to his win over Epping earlier in the week. His team had to regroup after losing twice on Wednesday and appearing on the ropes, said Toronto Sun's Mike Koreen. 

Kean’s young team regrouped after that setback, eventually clinching a spot in the Page 1-2 playoff game with a 6-2 win over John Epping in a battle for first place on Friday afternoon at the Flight Exec Centre in Dorchester. 

“Since we lost two times in a day, we’ve treated every game like it’s a must-win,” Kean, 26, said. “Wednesday was a very good day for us because it brought us down to earth. Our coach (Bryan Cochrane) told us we were being a little too aggressive. We won our first four games in seven ends and we started to feel invincible. He just told us to simplify things.”

Middaugh channels his inner Pat Ryan

Last night at the Recharge With Milk Ontario Men's tankard (quite a mouthful, that), Wayne Middaugh went back in time. He went all the way back to those days before the free-guard zone when curlers such as Pat Ryan put fans into a deep sleep with their style of play.

In his game with Rob Rumfeldt, Middaugh had last rock in the first end and kept it for all 10, finally scoring two in the final frame for a, um, ah,  thrilling 2-1 victory.


The scoreboard is shown below. z-z-z-z-z-z-z

Gushue: two-team provincial not good for the sport

More on the two-team provincial that's going to be played out east. Brad Gushue understands the need to move the provincial men's curling championship of Newfoundland and Labrador around, but hosting it in Labrador City may not be good for the sport. 

The perennial N+L rep at the Tim Hortons Brier spoke to The Telegram ahead of the provincial final that will feature just two teams -- his and Gary Wensman's. Seems most of the other contenders don't want to incur the expense to travel to the far-off location to get their asses handed to them by Gushue's squad.

“If we went up and there were four teams to play against, you could justify it, but to have one team, it doesn’t make much sense,” says the reigning 11-time Tankard champ. 

“There are so many good teams that could play, like (those skipped by) Ken Peddigrew, Andrew Symonds, Trent Skanes, and Colin Thomas especially, and we could probably list three or four others if it were here on the island.”

The two teams will play a best of five series for the Purple Hearts.

The Brier in Newfoundland? The bid is going in

Five years ago, I would have said this wasn't possible. Now, I'm kind of hoping it happens. Because if it does, the party would be off the hook. 

According to The Telelgram, a group including Brad Gushue is going to bid to bring the 2017 Tim Hortons Brier to St. John's. Yup as in Newfoundland and Labrador.  Gushue said the key will be showing the CCA it has the ability to put bums in the seats.

“There are going to be other bids and we need to make sure ours is the best,” says Gushue, the reigning 11-time provincial men’s champ who has been runner-up (2007) and a third-place finisher (2011) at the Brier. 

“If we can show that we’ve sold a whole bunch of event passes two years in advance, it’s going to be really hard for the CCA to say no to us.” 

With a little under two months before they officially submit the bid package, Sport Tourism Event Partnership (STEP) St. John’s and its partners launched a ticket-deposit campaign at the Bally Haly Country Club on Wednesday asking curling fans to make a $50 advance towards a full-event pass.

The arena, Mile One Centre, has a capacity of about 6,200, roughly the same number as was in the arena in Kamloops, B.C., which was the first medium-sized centre to hold the Brier in some time. That showed the N+L group that the CCA was willing to move into different markets with fewer seats. But the key will be filling those seats -- that didn't happen in Kamloops and the Brier was a dud.

Gushue said the Brier did will go in in about two months.

Backyard curling rink a hit in T.O.'s Junction

So lots of folks build backyard skating rinks, but what about if your back yard won't fit one of those?

Then you build a curling rink!

That's what Zack Sandor-Kerr did in his long, narrow yard and the Toronto Star caught up to him for this story.

“Last winter, we decided that we didn’t want to be hibernating anymore,” 29-year-old Zack Sandor-Kerr says. So, to stay active this winter, he built a miniature curling rink in the narrow backyard that stretches behind the Junction home he shares with his wife. 

“It’s really all about just getting outside and having some fun.” Sandor-Kerr, who works as a digital strategist, says he was inspired to build the rink after seeing archival photographs of people curling on the frozen Don River in the early 1900s. 

Of course that was back in the day when the Don River actually froze.

Sandor-Kerr added that he didn't really create his rink due to a love of the game.

“Prior to building the rink, I’d never thrown a curling stone before,” he says with a laugh.

Only two teams enter N+L provincial men's playdowns

While many provinces and regions lament the lack of teams entering the provincial playdowns -- both men's and women's --what's transpired in Newfoundland and Labrador will set a new standard. And that would be on the not-so-good scale. 

According to the St. John's Telegram, just two teams are entered in the provincial men's playdowns this year.

Peddigrew, along with last year’s runner-up Colin Thomas and others local skips such as Andrew Symonds and Trent Skanes, won’t be making the trip to the Big Land in an attempt to dethrone Brad Gushue, the reigning 11-time provincial champion. Instead, Gushue and company will be pitted against the Carol Curling Club’s Gary Wensman in a best-of-five spiel to decided who will represent the province at the Tim Horton’s Brier later this month in Calgary.

Yup, that's right. There are only two teams playing down for a Purple Heart. I'm sure somewhere in Manitoba there are teams checking the residency rules for Canada's most easterly province. Heck, in some places in this country there are more than two teams playing down to get out of the club.

Of course the reason for all of this is that one of the two teams is so much better than the rest, the other teams just decided to save their money. Brad Gushue has won the the crown 11 times and there's a good chance he'll win in again.  Yes, he's pretty dominant.

That Gushue has lost just one Tankard match in since — a 2010 defeat at the hands of Matt Blandford — is a big reason why Newfoundland and Labrador Curling Association (NLCA) president Gary Oke says other competitive teams are unwilling to fork over thousands of dollars to travel off the island. 

“You can’t blame Brad for doing what he does and doing it very well. He’s one of the best in the world,” Oke says. 

“But how many times can you beat your head against the wall?“He doesn’t only beat teams, he really dominates them. I always consider that if I’m close to beating a team, if I work a little harder or think a little better, I’ve got a chance at beating that team. But when he beats you 8-2 all the time, it’s tough.”

Junior brings in good numbers

So I'm not sure what was the bigger Sunday night surprise: Calling a pass play on the one-yard line or the fact that more than 200,000 Canadians watched curling rather than the Super Bowl.

While the Super Bowl saw the largest Canadian TV audience in history with 9.2 million turning in at some point, the M+M Meat Shops Canadian Junior drew a respectable audience of 206,000. That's going head to head with the big football game.

To put that in perspective, that number is about the same as the Raptors get for a regular game.

That's pretty impressive and shows just how ingrained curling is in the fabric of this country. Either that or curlers aren't Katy Perry fans.