McEwen’s Wild Card falls 7-6 in Brier tiebreaker

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This article was published 07/03/2020 (2342 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

KINGSTON, Ont. — The timing was off for Mike McEwen and, thus, so was his aim.

The Winnipegger had a golden opportunity Saturday morning to advance his Brier journey, but was a shade inside on his release and missed his last shot by a centimetre or two, falling to John Epping’s Ontario team 7-6 in a Canadian men’s curling championship tiebreaker at Leon’s Centre.

Trailing by two, the Wild Card skip had to delete a pair of red rocks — one in the top eight-foot and the other in the back four-foot — for a guaranteed count of three. Epping had presented him with the gift, tossing a freeze attempt heavy and creating some rock separation.

McEwen, whose week-long stats were superlative, was left with a tough but entirely makeable shot — the kind Tuesday club curlers at Elmwood dread but the world’s premier players thrive on.

Problematic, however, was time, or lack thereof.

Team Wild Card had about 30 seconds of thinking time left on its time clock when former Brandonite McEwen stepped into the hack, just moments after Epping’s rock came to rest, to quickly survey the situation. While no deep analysis with third Reid Carruthers was warranted, a few extra ticks of the clock for McEwen to settle himself before the final shot wouldn’t have hurt.

When his fingers released the rock handle, just 13 seconds remained. “I was a little gentle with it. I didn’t have much time to think,” he said afterward.

Translation? Pressed for time, McEwen delivered the stone with a softer release than usual, inadvertently adding some unnecessary curl.

“It’s not ideal. You don’t have the same pre-shot (routine) and visualization as you would have liked. It is what it is. It’s not ideal circumstances to throw that type of shot,” he said.

“I would be lying if I said (time) wasn’t (a factor). Sometimes, you make them under those circumstances and you shrug it off like it was nothing. Obviously, a shot to win a game like that I would have liked to have had even another 20 seconds on the clock so I had time to skate down and then throw it.”

Epping admitted afterward he was prepared to pack up his broom bag and head home.

“Shocking for sure, but he was really low on time, he was already in the hack ready to throw and that probably affected him a bit. Yeah, definitely surprised,” he said.

It wasn’t the only time Wild Card, with second Derek Samagalski and lead Colin Hodgson on the front end, was pressed for time.

On Thursday afternoon, McEwen had just 25 seconds left after his last release against Brad Jacobs of Northern Ontario in a 6-4 loss; in a 5-3 afternoon to defeat to Brad Gushue of Newfoundland-Labrador, only 44 seconds remained; and McEwen’s crew really cut it close in a 4-2 loss to Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher on Friday night, finishing with just 15 seconds showing.

Hodgson said it’s an area of concern Canada’s fourth-ranked team needs to fix.

“We were in big trouble with time to have any amount to even think about what we were doing (against Epping). So, ultimately, (I) believe that hurt us in four or five losses this week. We just ran ourselves out of time,” said Hodgson. “That’s clearly something we need to work on as a team, sit down and try to figure out where we’re losing the time and why.

“We need to fix that because it’s not the shot-making. Our process is just not where it needs to be when you’re under time constraint. We talked about this in a meeting. When you’ve got a gun to your head, it’s hard to make great decisions.”

Hodgson was named the recipient of the Ross Harstone Trophy, given annually to the player who displays “good sportsmanship, observance of the rules, exemplary conduct and curling ability.” The award is voted on by players from the 16 teams in the field.

Epping’s stay was extended by just a few hours, as his Toronto team dropped an 8-4 decision to Jacobs in the final tiebreaker.

The road to the Brier’s hallowed Tankard trophy would have, indeed, been a prolonged, arduous one for the Wild Card squad after joining a trio of teams, all with 7-4 records, in fourth-place jumble after completion of the championship round.

It required a five-game winning streak, starting with Epping and then evicting some of the world’s finest foursomes along the way, such as a couple of former Brier and Olympic champions named Brad — Jacobs and Gushue — along with ex-Winnipegger Matt Dunstone, now skipping a Saskatchewan team, and Bottcher’s sharp-shooters.

McEwen had the horses to go on a run. The 39-year-old skip was named a second-team all-star, finishing with a shooting accuracy of 89 per cent in a dozen contests, Carruthers (90) and Hodgson (93) were named to the first all-star team, while Samagalski (88) joined McEwen on the second team.

Wild Card won six of its first seven contests in preliminary pool play, the only blemish coming when Kevin Koe made a miraculous triple-takeout for a 10th-end deuce and a 3-2 victory Tuesday afternoon. But McEwen then dropped three of four games in the championship round, including stinkers to Jacobs and Gushue, and a squeaker to Bottcher that could have gone either way.

He conceded they weren’t nearly sharp enough in the tiebreaker.

“Out of the losses, we lost two (Koe and Bottcher) that really should have gone our way and would have changed our week of making the final four, so that was tough to take,” McEwen said. “But even though I had a shot (Saturday) to win there, John’s team out-played us, there’s no doubt about that.

“I was able to make some saviours to keep us in that game and, as it turned out, had one to win. We didn’t capitalize on a couple of opportunities to get (the record) to 8-3 and straight (into the Page playoff) that probably, when you look back on it, you need some of those things to happen.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell