Trials and prognostications

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This article was published 30/11/2017 (3050 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — It’s the only event in Canadian curling in which there is truly no second place.

Lose the final of a Brier or Scotties and your team will still pick up a cheque for $45,000 and lots of ranking points towards qualifying your team for other big events.

Lose the final of a cashspiel and there will be second-place money and some ranking points for you, too.

But lose the final of the Canadian Curling Trials — Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings in sponsor-speak — and the only consolation consideration you receive is a lifetime of “what if’s” to keep you up at night.

There is only one prize — and it’s a huge one — for the nine men’s and nine women’s curling teams gathered in Ottawa for Saturday’s start of the 2017 Trials: the right to represent Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea in February.

And when you consider that no Canadian curling team has ever failed to be on the podium at the Winter Games since curling became a full medal sport in 1998, the stakes grow even higher.

It’s one thing to be an Olympian, it’s quite another to be an Olympic medallist. Except, that is, in curling, where the two are the same thing.

This year’s Trials will take place at Canadian Tire Centre, the cavernous and much-maligned home of the Ottawa Senators, located in the nearby bedroom community of Kanata.

The teams will play eight-game round-robins, with the top three teams at the end of next week advancing to the playoffs. The first-place teams will get byes directly into Sunday’s finals, while the second- and third-place teams will play in semifinals next Saturday.

There will be three draws a day during the round-robin, with the exception of Saturday’s opening-day schedule, when there will be no morning draw. Draw times (all times Central) will be 8 a.m., 1 p.m. and 6 p.m., and TSN will broadcast all of them.

Here’s how we break down the odds:

THE WOMEN

• The favourite (5-2) — Jennifer Jones, Winnipeg

Jones, of course, won this event the last time it was held — in Winnipeg in 2013 — and went on that winter to put together a historic undefeated run in Sochi, Russia, capturing Olympic gold.

It counts, in other words, that she’s won this thing before. It’s worth noting, however, that no Canadian curler — man or woman — has ever repeated as Trials champion. (Alberta’s Kevin Martin won the Trials in 2001 and 2009, but Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue took the one in 2005).

But what matters even more, is that Jones is the skip of the hottest women’s team in Canada right now. Her team arrives in Ottawa after wins in each of their last two Grand Slam events and they’ve put together a red-hot cashspiel season (they also lost two other finals) that has them ranked second overall in the world, behind only Sweden’s Anne Hasselborg.

• The challenger (7-2) — Rachel Homan, Ottawa

Homan has been a curling prodigy since she was in early teens; a three-time Canadian women’s champion; and — with a world women’s championship last spring in Beijing — has now won everything there is to win in curling, with the exception of the right to represent Canada at the Olympics.

The Homan squad put together a decent cashspiel season — they won a couple early events and are the second highest ranked Canadian squad on tour, behind only Jones — but they haven’t been great lately; they missed the playoffs at the Grand Slam’s Masters in late October and were eliminated in the quarter-finals of The National, another Slam event, in November.

Still, hometown advantage counts for something, and Homan will have it for the next week and a bit.

• The pack (5-1) — Chelsea Carey, Calgary; Val Sweeting, Edmonton

Carey, formerly of Winnipeg, moved to Alberta and surprised everyone — with the possible exception of Chelsea Carey — in capturing a Canadian women’s title in 2016. She’s recruited five-time Canadian champion Cathy Overton-Clapham to curl third for her this year and the new foursome has had some success; they’ve made the semifinals of four of the six events they’ve played on tour so far.

Sweeting lost back-to-back Canadian finals in 2014 (to Homan) and 2015 (to Jones). This season, her squad won a Slam event in early September and since then have had three quarter-finals appearances and missed the playoffs in two other events. They’re ranked sixth in the world going into this event.

• The dark horse (6-1) — Michelle Englot, Winnipeg

Englot has a delivery you couldn’t teach. And wouldn’t want to.

But it works for her, and she showed, in reaching the final of last year’s national Scotties (she lost to Homan), that it can carry her a long way, even at the age of 53.

Throw in a reliable and very experienced front end in Raunora Westcott and Leslie Wilson-Westcott and an unflappable third in Kate Cameron, and these women are more than capable of authorizing the surprise of the week.

• The rest (10-1) — Krista McCarville, Thunder Bay; Alli Flaxey, Toronto; Casey Scheidegger, Lethbridge, Alta.; Julie Tippin, Woodstock, Ont.

You’ve probably heard of McCarville — she’s represented Ontario six times at the national Scotties, finishing second as recently as 2016 when she lost the final to Carey. She qualified for this event just last month at a pre-trials competition, so you know her team is curling well at the right time.

As for the rest? Well, it’ll be a shock if any of the others are in the mix next weekend. Of course, that’s what they also said about Mike Harris before the start of the very first Canadian Curling Trials back in 1997, and his team of Ontario unknowns went on to win that week and then bring home silver from the Games in Nagano, Japan.

Prediction: Jones defeats Homan in the final.

 

THE MEN

• The favourite (3-1) — Brad Gushue, St. John’s

Both Gushue and third Mark Nichols have been here, done that. They defeated Jeff Stoughton’s Winnipeg foursome in the 2005 Trials final and went on to win gold in Torino, Italy.

But vastly more relevant than what they did 12 years ago is what they’ve been doing lately, and that’s been nothing less than dominating all comers. They’ve won four of the six events they entered on the cash tour this fall, including two Grand Slams, and they have a win-loss record this season of, gulp… 32-5.

Throw in a Brier title and world championship last spring and this foursome has been hands down, the best men’s team in Canada all year long.

It’s theirs to lose.

• The pack (9-2) — Reid Carruthers, Winnipeg; Mike McEwen, Winnipeg; Brad Jacobs, Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.; Kevin Koe, Edmonton; John Morris, Vernon, B.C.

Carruthers, a 2011 world champion as second for Stoughton, has put together a decent cashspiel season, qualifying for the playoffs in six of the eight events he played in and winning one — the Canad Inns Classic in Portage La Prairie — in late October. His team comes in ranked sixth in the world.

After years of being best-known as a man who never met a Manitoba men’s final that he couldn’t lose, McEwen finally earned his first-ever Brier berth two winters ago and then added a repeat Manitoba men’s championship last spring, going on to lose the 2017 Brier semifinal in an extra end.

He’s followed up this season with a strong cash tour, finishing no worse than the semifinals in five of the six events his team entered.

Jacobs is the defending Olympic gold medallist and skip of a team that has always seemed to thrive in the role of underdog. But they haven’t been anything remotely resembling an underdog since grabbing gold in Sochi, and will come into this event ranked third in the world. Repeating is tough, but they’ve had a strong fall tour, cashing playoff cheques at four of the five events they entered and winning one of them.

Koe won the 2016 Brier and world championship and followed that up last spring with a run all the way to the Brier final again, before he got knocked off by Gushue. A three-time Brier champion — and two-time world champ — he is famously unflappable and seems to thrive in the high-stress moments. If he’s still playing on the final weekend, he will be tough to beat.

Morris has an Olympic gold medal from curling third for Kevin Martin in Vancouver in 2010 and he won a Brier as recently as 2015, curling with Pat Simmons. He’ll have Jim Cotter at third for this go-around, and Cotter can make some shots. But the bottom line is this: Morris is good enough to win an event all on his own, and he might have to.

• The dark horse (8-1) — John Epping, Toronto

Unless you’re a diehard curling fan who watches a lot of cashspiels, you’ve probably never heard of Epping. While he’s never won a provincial men’s title or curled in the Brier, fellow curlers know he’s a guy who can win on any given Sunday.

He’s ranked seventh in the world coming into this weekend and he made the playoffs in five of the eight events his team competed in this fall, including the semifinals of a Grand Slam event just last month.

Stranger things have happened at this event.

• The rest (10-1) — Steven Laycock, Saskatoon; Brendan Bottcher, Edmonton

Laycock is a men’s curler from Saskatchewan, a province that hasn’t produced a Brier champion since 1980. Any questions?

The best part of Laycock’s team is the player from Manitoba — vice-skip Matt Dunstone, a former Manitoba junior champion who also lost the 2016 Manitoba men’s final to McEwen.

Bottcher won his first Alberta men’s title last winter — and promptly went 3-8 at the Brier. This field is way tougher than that one.

Prediction: Gushue over McEwen in the final.

 

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek