Carey rocks Englot in 10, breaking Manitoba’s Scotties streak

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This article was published 21/02/2017 (3452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — Imagine the scene at Scotties late Tuesday evening, as the night’s last rocks slid down the ice. In the moments between the growl of granite and the gasps of stunned fans, Meridian Centre was silent.

Minutes earlier, Team Manitoba had been trailing far behind defending Canadian champion Chelsea Carey. With deadlines creeping closer, reporters tapped at their keyboards, building the skeletons of the day’s stories.

“Don’t look now,” one reporter said to another. “But Michelle Englot is doing that thing again.”

What that meant: for the third time in four games, the Manitoba skip was clawing her way back from the brink. And in the final seconds of the 10th end, it seemed as if Englot would once again complete a stunning comeback win.

Then Carey settled into the hack, fixed her sight on where Amy Nixon had placed the broom, and delivered her hammer. It needed to be perfect. It was, tapping into a crowded house to score two, sealing an 8-7 win.

With that, Englot suffered her first loss of the week, knocking her to 6-1 in the standings. Carey, who has so far lost only to Rachel Homan, rose to 5-1. Yet what a game, what a series of shots and misses, what a wild way to finish.

“We’re just here to entertain people, so why not?” Carey said, laughing, her face flushed with relief after the win.

She was kidding, of course, this one was a heartstopper for both teams. Of course, it might not have been, had Englot come out sharper in the first half; she shot just 48 per cent in the first five ends, her shakiest start yet.

Those misses piled up. Carey limited Englot to singles in the first and third ends; in between, the former Manitoban champ collected a deuce of her own. She grabbed a steal in the fifth, and stole two more in the sixth for a 6-2 lead.

“We need to start the games a little quicker,” Englot said, later. “We’re playing really solid in the second half of the games, but I struggled with weight early. Once we caught on, then we were battling back again. It was close.”

In the seventh, Englot hoped to draw in for two. The draw worked fine, but a measure found that a Carey rock sat just close enough to limit Manitoba to a single. But in the eighth, the buffalo gals suddenly started stampeding.

“We just needed to score a couple of points,” she said. “From there, it was like, ‘OK, let’s do what worked for us, and keep putting rocks in play, and see what happens.’”

They stole two in that end and then, in the ninth, they repeated that feat. Carey’s first shot crashed on a guard, leaving two Manitoba stones sitting shot; Carey would try a tricky angle raise with hammer, but it didn’t work.

“We didn’t play very well in nine,” Carey said. “They made two great shots in behind the guard, and we’re chasing them the whole end, and we couldn’t defend against it. I don’t think they missed a shot in eight and nine.

“So what do you do?” she continued. “You can’t do much about that. We’re playing safe shot and peeling, they’re making everything perfect, you get into trouble.”

It was a heartbreaker for Manitoba, perhaps especially because they had come so close. But that’s the way it goes when the first half of the game is so rough; besides, Englot never thought she’d finish the round-robin unscathed.

Earlier in the day, she’d padded her record with an entertaining 9-5 win over Alberta. “We thought if we split today, we’re still in good shape,” she said. “We just need to regroup, and come out and play a full game.”

With four games left, Englot will now look to cement a playoff position. She has a prime opportunity on Wednesday, when she faces Prince Edward Island in the morning and Nova Scotia’s Mary Mattatall in the afternoon draw.

Both of those teams are trailing in the standings. Team P.E.I.’s Robyn MacPhee is sitting 2-4 after Tuesday; Nova Scotia veteran Mattatall — who also just won the province’s senior championship — is 1-5 on the week.

Meanwhile, Team Manitoba’s toughest test looms at the end of the week. They’ll cap their round robin on Thursday night, when they go head-to-head against Homan. Set your alarms; the rocks will start sliding at 6:30 p.m. CST.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca