Almost perfect no good

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This article was published 05/03/2016 (3792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — So, just how good is the field here at the 2016 Tim Hortons Brier?

Well, Manitoba shot 93 per cent as a team on the opening draw here Saturday afternoon — and lost.

Making their long-awaited Brier debut, Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen and team — third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld — were nothing short of sensational in their Brier opener against Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue, doing just about everything right and yet still losing 5-4 in an extra end to a Newfoundland squad that was just a tiny bit better.

If this had been a Brier final, people would be speaking about it for years to come as an epic tilt between two curling heavyweights.

Instead, it will just go down as a really well-played game in a week that promises to have all kinds of them, thanks to a stacked field that many are already calling the deepest ever assembled in a Canadian men’s curling championship.

Newfoundland also shot 93 per cent as a team and in the end, the tiny margin of difference may have been nothing more than a disputed hogline violation called against Wozniak in the tenth end that led to the removal of a perfectly played Manitoba rock and removed all chance of McEwen scoring a game-winning deuce in the 10th end.

With the Wozniak rock out of play, McEwen had to settle for a game-tying single that sent the game to the decisive extra end with Newfoundland holding hammer.

Television replays clearly showed Wozniak double-clutched the rock in question, but it was unclear whether he had cleanly removed his hand by the time the rock crossed the hogline.

Wozniak said after the game that he was stunned when the red light on the rock handle that signals a hogline violation began flashing. “I’m not in a position to argue with the mechanism or the officials,” said Wozniak. “But it is hard for me to believe because I’ve never had a hogline violation in my entire life.

“I’ve usually let go of a rock long before it gets to that point.”

To the surprise of no one, Gushue saw the Wozniak release differently. “He hogged it, for sure,” said Gushue. “I’ve hogged enough rocks myself that when it’s blinking red like that, you did something wrong.”

It was a bittersweet ending to what was otherwise a day of affirmation for a McEwen foursome that spent a lifetime trying to get to this event but made their presence felt very quickly and in a big way.

The day began for Manitoba with an extended run by McEwen and Denni Neufeld in the pre-event skills competition. McEwen finished third in the skills playoff round Saturday morning, while Denni Neufeld finished second to Gushue in a foreshadowing of things to come later in the day.

“I don’t know that we proved anything yet,” McEwen said after the Newfoundland game. “But I was definitely happy with how comfortable we looked out there.

“There was no jitters. We were ready to play right away.”

McEwen said he had reservations of about playing in the playoff round of the skills competition so close in time to the start of Manitoba’s opening game, but came away feeling it was the best thing that could have happened.

“It was probably the best practice we could have asked for,” said McEwen. “It made me really comfortable to play this first game. I was thinking it would be a tight time-frame and a distraction, but it ended up being a blessing for us to get going quick.”

Manitoba played just one game on Saturday, but has a two-game day on Sunday, taking on Ontario’s Glenn Howard on the morning draw and then New Brunswick’s Mike Kennedy in the evening.

Howard got his Brier off to a hot start with 5-4 extra end win over Alberta’s Kevin Koe Saturday afternoon that brought a near capacity opening draw crowd at TD Place to its feet.

Nova Scotia sent a team to every Brier since 1927, but will now miss their second in a row after once again being eliminated in the pre-event relegation round. Nova Scotia skip Jamie Murphy flashed his last rock of the 10th end of the relegation final Saturday afternoon to lose 7-4 to  Jamie Koe and the Northwest Territories. The win advanced the Territories to the 12-team Brier round-robin.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek