McEwen opens with white-knuckle win

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/03/2019 (2629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Pretty much nothing went according to script, yet Mike McEwen couldn’t have penned a more gratifying end to a Brier opener on home ice.

Sure, his woefully wide toss in the third end resulting in a steal of two for the bad guys was a punch to the gut; indeed, Derek Samagalski’s flash on a simple hit in the seventh was a head-scratcher; and the despicable pick on a crucial stone by Reid Carruthers just after his delivery, also in the seventh end, was possible evidence of some dastardly work by the curling gods.

But Manitoba refused to give in to the cruel collusion.

The resolve of McEwen and his West St. Paul teammates remained steadfast, and the thundering support of fans at Westoba Place spurred them on to a spell-binding 7-6 victory over Saskatchewan’s Kirk Muyres on Saturday afternoon on Day 1 of the 2019 Canadian men’s curling championship.

There’s a lot to unpack in this one, but let’s cut to the chase. Trailing by one, the Manitoba skip took some additional moments in the hack — time he finally had (more on that later) — to collect himself, then coolly drew the four-foot for a deuce in the 10th end to nail down the win.

“That type of win, you don’t get many that look that exciting, that heart-thumping,” said McEwen, 38, with daughter Vienna clinging to him down on interview alley. “Oh, man… almost running out of time, the heart’s racing, throwing a few Hail Marys, there’s nothing better than to open the Brier like that.”

McEwen, third Carruthers, second Samagalski and lead Colin Hodgson didn’t just have to beat the Kirk Muyres quartet from Saskatoon, they had to beat the clock.

Teams here are afforded 38 minutes of “thinking time” each game. Beginning the ninth end, Manitoba was down to a measly four minutes left but picked up the pace and still made their shots.

“Definitely tested under fire. Coach (Rob Meakin) even said he was proud of the guys for actually how many shots they made when we were running out of time. That’s very difficult to do in a hurry-up offence. We’re playing from behind and that’s difficult,” McEwen said.

“I was pretty proud of the guys for making a lot of shots in front of me late in the game.”

Saskatchewan was staked to a 3-0 lead after an ugly miss by McEwen in the third end and was up 4-2 at the fifth-end break. Muyres had a shot for a deuce in the seventh but pitched his last rock through the rings, settled for one and a 5-4 advantage.

Manitoba was in a heap of trouble in the eighth end — until McEwen made The Shot.

Staring at a yellow Saskatchewan counter on the button, one of his own red rocks just behind it and a pile of granite in front, McEwen considered dumping his final toss to the boards to surrender one and fall behind by two.

No way, he told his teammates, opting to try a rather improbable long, angle-raise takeout for a game-tying single, instead. And he executed to perfection.

“I don’t know if I had my statistics right, but it felt like throwing it away and giving them a steal of one really was going to lead to a loss. I don’t know exactly what the statistics are, down two playing nine. I know they’re pretty dire,” said McEwen, who is competing in his fourth consecutive national championship.

“Lo and behold, I’m a bit of a gambler, I don’t know if it was the right call. Obviously, it was… because of what happened. We rolled the dice and it became the thing that gave us a chance to win that game.”

Shepherding the stone on its way, Hodgson and Samagalski went a little nutso when it caught a sizeable chunk of a guard, knocking it forward to remove the Saskatchewan counter and settle for one.

Cue the frenzied crowd.

“I’ve never played a curling game in my life that was like this. And that was just Game 1,” Hodgson admitted afterward. “Everybody has your back out there, which is really neat. Sometimes, when you struggle through games you feel alone out there. But when you struggle with shots here, you’ve got people trying to pick you up.

“That was probably the most fun I’ve ever had curling, even though the game wasn’t textbook.”

Muyres heaved his final rock through the rings in the ninth and had to settle for one, surrendering the hammer to Manitoba in the 10th.

McEwen was actually heavy with a draw on his first stone to sit two, but Muyres wrecked on a guard while attempting to remove Manitoba’s seemingly wide-open shot stone. That opened the door for McEwen’s perfect toss for the triumph.

Muyres lamented a huge missed opportunity to nick up one of the Brier favourites early in the event.

“I just threw my last one soft. I didn’t commit to in the hack, I guess, and that’s how it goes sometimes. A team like that will beat you if you don’t finish off strong. We played good the whole game, and just the last couple of rocks didn’t quite go our way,” he said.

“Maybe against some other teams you’re going to get away with that, but not against those guys.”

Manitoba has a pair of games today. McEwen battles Quebec’s Martin Crête in the morning and Brendan Bottcher’s Wild-Card team in the evening.

Hodgson said emerging on the right side of a nail-biter to start the Brier is great first step.

“You couldn’t ask for a better game where you go through adversity but come through in the end and make the clutch shots, the kind we need to make the whole week,” Hodgson said. While McEwen, Carruthers and Samagalski all wore ball caps Saturday afternoon, he had no intention of cloaking his new do — an intense fade with an intricate design.

“That was a perfect start to the event. The last thing you want to do, if you are going to win your first game, is to walk through it because you really don’t learn anything about anything.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell