’Toba power

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This article was published 19/02/2016 (3707 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alta. — What does it say about Manitoba curling the last three provincial champs are at Scotties, together, all wearing different jackets?

Hey, call it the Manitoban invasion. Heck, maybe the province could start exporting skips all over Canada, take the whole country over…

That’s getting ahead of ourselves, though. For now, there is a 2016 Canadian women’s curling championship to be decided, and the three top contenders at this Tournament of Hearts are all current or very recent former holders of the buffalo jacket. For fans watching back home, it can’t get much better.

Meet the crew: on top, of course, there’s Jennifer Jones, wearing the Maple Leaf as reigning national champ. The primary challenger is Chelsea Carey, the 2014 buffalo gal now turned Albertan star. Then there’s Kerri Einarson, who lost a Manitoba final to each of them before claiming her own.

“It’s kinda crazy,” Chelsea Carey said, after taping an interview with TSN Friday afternoon. “It’s interesting. The history there goes back… we’ve all been battling it out for a long time. I think it’s great. It’s certainly a feather in the cap of Manitoba curling.”

Those years-old regional rivalries will get an early showcase today, when Carey and Jones face off in each rink’s first game of the week. The Scotties’ opening draw often features a rematch of the previous year’s final, and it was Jones who defeated former Alberta champ Val Sweeting for the 2015 gold medal.

Carey, third Amy Nixon, second Jocelyn Peterman and lead Laine Peters have played Jones only once this season, and lost. So it’ll be a tough start.

“I like it that way,” Carey said. “There’s no easing in. It forces you to get focused early. There’s lots of stuff going on, you’re excited to be here, it’s easy to not quite be focused right from the get-go. But when you’re playing a team like that, you know you have to be. It forces that issue.”

On that note, Jones concurs. And considering there’s a long week of curling ahead, Jones hinted the 2:30 p.m. CST game could bring some early fireworks.

“They’re a tremendous team, and we’re going to play them in front of the hometown crowd,” Jones said. “We know we’re going to have to play really well to win. If we lose, it’s OK, there’s still a long week to go. It’s kind of a game that you can throw it all out there, try some things and see what works.”

That’s sort of been the story of the season for Jones’ rink, which shuffled up some of their communication, shot-calling and technique early in the season to freshen things up. It didn’t always work so well, and the first half of their season was relatively quiet.

But they built steadily through the year, pausing their Grand Slam circuit with a final appearance at the Canadian Open in December. Now, Jones said, her team is looking settled on the brink of the Scotties — but also pointed out they have longer-term goals in mind.

“I feel like we captured all the things that would work, and we put it into a package,” Jones said. “We’re feeling pretty good right now. We’re playing well, we’re playing with some confidence. But for us, the focus is on playing even better 18 months from now.”

In the meantime, Jones is the runaway favourite to win this thing, which would tie her with Colleen Jones at a record six Canadian championships. Carey will no doubt be pushing her, and Einarson is the next-highest-ranked skip in Grande Prairie, with a knack for winning big games.

Still, things could get interesting. Much has (and will be) said about the wide-open nature of this Scotties, the way the glaring absences of Ontario’s Rachel Homan, Sweeting and Saskatchewan’s Stefanie Lawton make it seem as if anything could happen. Even Carey is wary of the lesser-known, more regionally focused teams in the field.

“The thing for us is, those teams are difficult — Sweeting, Homan — but we also know what to expect from them,” Carey said. “So we know how we would play against them. Whereas we’re just not that familiar with a lot of teams here, because they don’t play on the tour.”

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In other words, some of the fresh Scotties faces, such as Saskatchewan’s Jolene Campbell, are unknown quantities on a hot streak — and that can be dangerous.

“There’s a reason why they won the finals,” Carey continued. “They’re upsets, sure. But if you’re a bad team, you don’t beat Rachel Homan. You don’t beat Stefanie Lawton. We have a lot of respect for them without knowing a lot about them, because they’re here.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.