Manitoba, Ontario last unbeaten teams at Scotties

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This article was published 19/02/2017 (3163 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. CATHARINE’S, Ont. — It’s still oh-so-early at the 2017 Scotties Tournament of Hearts. With only two days of round robin play in the books, the real grind of the national women’s curling championship has barely begun.

Yet through the first five draws at Meridian Centre, there have been flashes of the thrills — and spills — to come.

For one thing, the arena has been hopping. The opening games drew the biggest crowd, filling 3,642 of its 5,300 seats, but every draw has seen plenty of applauding fans in the seats, especially for this early in the week.

It will be a few days before the tension peaks, but those early crowds have been rewarded with some crisp action on the sheets.

Consider Team Manitoba skip Michelle Englot, who was cool, calm and sharp through her first three games. She built her unbeaten record with wins over Saskatchewan and Northwest Territories on Sunday, both of them well-controlled.

In fact, through three three games she led all skips with a cumulative 90 per cent shot-making percentage; Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville was second at 83 per cent; and unbeaten Rachel Homan was third at 81 per cent.

The best of Englot’s shots so far, Manitoba third Kate Cameron figured, came in Saturday’s game against Quebec, when Englot had to make a silky draw against three; if she had missed, that might have lost the game. She didn’t.

But one could also pick out some other greatest hits: there was a tight hit for three against Quebec that gave them their first lead. Against Galusha on Sunday, she threw a missile with her first shot of the 10th, that left her lying three.

“This has been Michelle the last two or three months,” Cameron said. “It’s very rare she does miss. We have such high expectations of her, and I think she’s so confident now that she’s making all these shots. She works hard at it.”

True, she had a few misses. In the ninth end of that Sunday afternoon game, Galusha made a perfect draw to the button with her final shot; in response Englot’s hammer draw crashed into a guard, and gave NWT a steal of one.

Still, that left the Manitobans leading 5-4 coming home with hammer, which wasn’t such a terrible place to be. Englot closed out the 10th by making a straight hit for four, setting a 9-4 final score.

So that was a fine day’s work for Englot, the seven-time Saskatchewan champ who hopped aboard the ready-made Manitoba team of Cameron, second Leslie Wilson and lead Raunora Westcott late last season.

The fact she beat this year’s green team, led by Moose Jaw’s Penny Barker, made Sunday even sweeter. Yes, Englot said later, it felt strange to face a team wearing her familiar colours. She also really wanted to beat them.

She did, leading Manitoba to an 8-5 win. Other than a few errant misses, Team Manitoba looked comfortable and played relatively consistently; they maintained pressure and pushed Barker into some tough shots.

“I thought we had real better control over our draw weight that entire game,” Englot said. “We had them in trouble in most ends. It was a little bit better out there in terms of ice conditions, and we got used to the ice a bit better.”

“I’m actually glad we played them early in the week, instead of later,” Englot said. “It’s done with now, and the story’s done, and we can just move on and concentrate on the rest of the week.”

With due respect to her past opponents, that week could be about to get tougher. On Monday, Englot is set to lead her troops into two games, starting with a 1:30 p.m. CST afternoon match against Newfoundland’s Stacie Curtis.

At night, the Manitobans will face a key early test, as they go head-to-head with Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville.

Depending on how the week rolls out, it’s entirely possible for this game to have eventual playoff implications. Last year, the Thunder Bay skip overcame Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson and Jen Jones en route to the Scotties final.

McCarville came out flat in her first game on Saturday, falling 11-6 to Alberta’s Shannon Kleibrink. But she rebounded on Sunday, beating Quebec’s Eve Belisle in the morning and Saskatchewan’s Barker 8-3 in the evening draw.

That was a crucial turnaround for McCarville. After a breakout performance in 2016 — the skip flew under the radar, fresh off a break from competitive play — they know the rest of the field will be coming at them guns blazing.

“All the other Scotties coming in, we weren’t one of the top teams they looked at to be in there,” she said. “This year they are… we have to come out playing our best every single game to beat them. We knew that coming in.”

Meanwhile, there were other big hits at Meridian Centre on Sunday, including one that put Quebec on the board.

Montreal skip Belisle didn’t have the easiest schedule to start her Scotties: her first two games pit her against Englot and McCarville, and left her sitting at 0-2.

But in the seventh end of her match against Alberta’s Kleibrink on Sunday afternoon, with the score tied 4-4, something finally broke Belisle’s way: she got a chance to hit for a five-ender and a commanding lead.

“We made all perfect shots that end, and they missed a few at the end there,” Belisle said, beaming after the game. “It felt great to make that shot. I’d missed a few easy shots earlier in the game, so that one felt good.”

Thanks to that one, Quebec went on to win 9-5 after eight ends. Team Quebec is now 1-2 on the week; Kleibrink, a 2006 Olympic bronze medalist and five-time Scotties contender, wrapped Sunday sitting at 2-1.

On that note, Team Alberta’s evening game featured a welcome cameo by two-time Canadian champion Heather Nedohin, serving as the team alternate. She stepped in for Kleibrink in a 5-3 win over Newfoundland-Labrador.

Finally, Sunday evening ended with a heart-stopping close call for Team Canada and Chelsea Carey, pushed to an extra end by Prince Edward Island’s Robyn MacPhee.

It went right to the very last rock. With MacPhee sitting shot, Carey had to make a precise draw to the four foot to win. She did one better, putting the granite almost directly on the button to seal an 8-7 victory, and a 2-1 record.

The full standings, after the fifth draw of the 2017 Scotties Sunday night:

Manitoba (Englot) 3-0

Ontario (Homan) 3-0

Canada (Carey) 2-1

Alberta (Kleibrink) 2-1

Newfoundland & Labrador (Curtis) 2-1

Northwest Territories (Galusha) 2-1

Nova Scotia (Mattatall) 1-2

Quebec (Belisle) 1-2

Prince Edward Island (MacPhee) 0-3

Saskatchewan (Barker) 0-3

British Columbia (Mallett) 0-3

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca