Maritime disaster for Manitoba

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This article was published 11/03/2017 (3333 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Mike McEwen won’t get the rematch he and his Manitoba teammates so desperately craved.

McEwen was in total command of the 2017 Brier semifinal after six ends before things unravelled, eventually losing 7-6 to Team Canada’s Kevin Koe at Mile One Centre on Saturday night after his last-rock, double-raise takeout missed the mark, giving the defending champions a winning steal of one. Koe will play home-town favourite Brad Gushue of Newfoundland-Labrador in the Canadian men’s curling championship finale today at 5:30 p.m. CT. It’s a repeat of the 2016 Brier final, held in Ottawa.

McEwen’s Winnipeg team of third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld lost the 1 vs. 2 Page playoff game to Gushue on Friday night. Both teams had completed the week-long round-robin with identical 9-2 records. Manitoba now has to get up off the mat and play the much-maligned bronze-medal game at 12:30 p.m. against Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs.

That, too, is a repeat of last year’s third-place matchup.

Koe defeated Jacobs earlier in the day in the 3 vs. 4 Page playoff game. McEwen led 3-1 through four ends, 5-2 after six and 6-4 heading to the 10th, but Koe blasted a pair of Manitoba counters out to post a massive deuce to force an extra end. In the 11th, he welded his last-rock draw to a McEwen stone that, the Manitoba skip lamented, should not have been there.

“I guess we tried to do too much. We had a rock roll to just a horrendous place (in the extra end) and that was our undoing,” said McEwen.

The rock he was referring to was one of his team’s own.

On a peel attempt earlier in the extra end, a red rock caromed to the back of the button behind a centre guard, and Koe used his last stone to draw the button, mostly frozen to that troubling stone. All McEwen had left was a miracle shot — but the aim was off.

“It was just an awful break where that rolled to. That’s on us. We tried to do too much there. That’d be the only call I’d probably change,” he said, suggesting a different call on the peel likely wouldn’t result in that rock coming to rest behind the T-line.

McEwen actually had a chance to beat Koe to the button with his first throw, but the rock came up a few feet short, allowing the veteran Edmonton skip a free path. They preferred the draw to peeling a short centre guard, to exert some pressure on Koe.

“He might not have a shot, it might be just handshakes,” he said. “He maybe would have a run to kill everything. He would have to save his shooter. But that might have not been there if they were square on each other.

“It didn’t look like we were panicking (on the draw). I thought it looked pretty good, but it ended up a couple of feet short.”

McEwen had a shot to deliver a huge body blow in the eighth.

Up 5-3 and with hammer, he gambled and tried to blast out a Canada counter to score as many as three, but his aim was a bit off or the angles weren’t quite right and Koe nabbed a point, instead. McEwen got a single back in the ninth before Koe’s dandy double-takeout knotted the game 6-6 in the 10th.

Koe’s foursome shot a stellar 92 per cent, while McEwen’s crew was just behind at 89 per cent. Team Canada third Marc Kennedy was an other-worldly 100 per cent on 22 deliveries, while B.J. Neufeld nearly kept pace and was just three points lower. McEwen’s first rock that came up light of the nail hole was the real killer, said B.J.

“There’s not too much to say, just didn’t execute Mike’s the way we wanted to at the end,” he said.

“And then (we) had a really, really tough shot to win and didn’t make it.”

He gave Koe’s foursome, including second Brent Laing and lead Ben Hebert, credit for rallying down the stretch.

“They’re tough, they’re a tremendous team and they’re going to keep fighting till the game’s over. That’s the way it goes,” said B.J. Koe, admitted they were in a heap of trouble for much of the do-or-die semifinal between two of the world’s best foursomes. The skip hasn’t missed many crucial shots this week, but he strung together a couple of ugly tosses in the fourth.

Leading 1-0, his takeout attempt with his first rock was wide, chipping a red McEwen stone even deeper behind cover. The Manitoba skip eased a draw around a centre guard to lie two, but Koe’s straight-back takeout try sailed through a gap, allowing McEwen a simple draw for a pivotal count of three.

“We played pretty good, I just had some bad misses — two in one end for a big three-ball. But we stayed in there,” Koe said.

“You just gotta keep making big shots when you’re down and hope the other team cracks a bit and misses. We put the pressure on him and were fortunate to get a couple of misses.”

The expected packed house — 6,000 delirious members of Gushue Nation — won’t intimidate Team Canada with a chance to retain the maple leaf on the line, Koe said.

“Obviously, it will be another level. It will be way louder. But we’re a pretty experienced team,” he said. “We’ll be ready. We have a tough game, but if we can sneak another one out, we’d be honoured to be Team Canada for another year.”

The Brier winner qualifies for the world men’s championship in Edmonton in early April.

Earlier in the day, Koe dumped Jacobs 6-2 in the 3 vs. 4 Page playoff game — a contest interrupted for almost an hour because of a power failure at the downtown arena. High winds, registering as strong as 140 km/h by Environment Canada, knocked out power in many regions of St. John’s on Saturday afternoon.

Northern Ontario won the 2013 Brier and the 2014 Olympic gold medal in Sochi, Russia, but wound up third at last year’s Brier and has been relegated to the bronze-medal game again. It’s a game viewed by many players as meaningless and an inconvenience. Jacobs, speaking from a position of experience, said it’s nearly impossible to get motivated for the matchup, making the case his squad bowed out first and is effectively out of medals already.

“We come here to win the tankard. I feel like we were fourth place heading into the playoffs and we finished in fourth place. I think the three best teams are left right now,” Jacobs said.

“Whoever we end up playing is going to be coming off a loss, so they’re not going to want to play, either. So, it’s going to be difficult for both teams.

“But regardless, we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to go out and play because there’ll be many people watching it at home, and there might be a few people in the stands here, so we gotta go out there and try to win it and entertain the fans.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

@wfpJasonBell