Knockout punch

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This article was published 07/03/2019 (2591 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Demoralizing might not even be a strong enough word.

Manitoba lies three before Team Canada third Mark Nichols launches his first rock of the sixth end Thursday afternoon. Mere minutes later, Manitoba skip Mike McEwen reluctantly draws against two with his final stone for an unsexy single.

Just another frustrating episode at the 2019 Brier of “How the end turns” for the Westoba Place crowd favourites.

Every time McEwen’s foursome tried to build something, Brad Gushue and friends kicked over their blocks. A trio of singles with last rock — a complete misuse of a perfectly good hammer — wasn’t near enough for the West St. Paul foursome, which hung around but finally succumbed 6-3 to the two-time defending champions.

But that was merely a punch to the gut of McEwen’s team, with third Reid Carruthers, second Derek Samagalski and lead Colin Hodgson; the knockout blow came in the nightcap from Alberta’s Kevin Koe (9-0), who registered a 6-5 triumph over Buffalo bunch.

Back-to-back defeats dropped Manitoba to a dismal 4-5 at the Canadian men’s curling championship and a galaxy far, far away from the front-runners of the Brier’s eight-team championship pool.

Things looked good for McEwen in the late draw — until they didn’t. He missed a run-back with his last rock, allowing Koe to draw for a game-winning deuce. The West St. Paul team led 4-2 after seven ends but couldn’t hold on.

“That wasn’t a super easy shot I had to play. To make sure he couldn’t have two, I had to nut it,” McEwen said. “I’m not frustrated at all, actually. That’s probably the best game we’ve played all week.”

Earlier in the day, Team Canada wasn’t as its most precise. In fact, McEwen’s crew led in the stats department with a combined 87 per cent shooting accuracy, while Gushue’s group was four points lower. The difference? The 2017 world champions executed on the attempts that mattered most, while their rivals frittered away chances.

Such as in the second end when McEwen slid heavy on a draw to the button to ruin a chance for a deuce.

“To be able to get ahead of whoever you’re playing, the top teams, and dictate the scoreboard is big, so that was absolutely a big point. I thought we threw it OK but it’s just that much quicker out wide and it just didn’t work out. That would have been a big control point,” said McEwen, 37, who was born and raised in Brandon.

Or like in the sixth when Nichols, facing three, made a sensational double-takeout to limit some damage. McEwen couldn’t duplicate the double on his first shot with a chance to sit two, and, ultimately, had to settle for one.

“I had an opportunity to make the double to lie two and it didn’t work out, then you get forced. Yeah, it’s tough. You don’t get a whole bunch of opportunities to convert.

“That was a big one to try and convert. You just gotta be better,” said McEwen, competing in his third straight national championship.

Or like in the fifth and ninth, when the skipper from St. John’s, N.L., wielded the hammer with efficiency, tossing to chomp a bit of the button for a second point in each of the ends.

“There weren’t many opportunities to kind of get away from them and get some separation, but I felt like we had control, we kept the hammer, we got that one-up with (the hammer) lead, which is nice and then made a big draw in nine to get three up coming home,” Gushue said.

“We played solid and never really gave them opportunities to score points. That kept the crowd out of it.”

McEwen hooks up with Jim Cotter of British Columbia (4-5) at 2 p.m. Today and Ontario’s Scott McDonald (6-3) in the 7 p.m. draw.

So, McEwen’s up-and-down 2018-19 competitive season has hit a sinkhole in Brandon, with another couple of events still coming up.

Leave the post-mortem on Year 1 of a project where two skips — close friends and long-time rivals — joined forces for another day.

The perception is Team McEwen/Carruthers is not at its best in Brandon. If it is, Manitoba’s drought at the Brier, now at eight years, is really only just beginning.

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell