Bubble Brier a big opportunity Gunnlaugson, McEwen teams set for stacked field at Canadian men's curling championship By: Jason Bell Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Mar. 3, 2021 Last Modified: 7:35 PM CST Wednesday, Mar. 3, 2021 Updates

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Jason Gunnlaugson isn’t approaching the next 10 days in the Calgary bubble as a bonus Brier.

Nor should the 36-year-old skip as his Team Manitoba crew eagerly awaits the dawn of the Canadian men’s curling championship. A second consecutive appearance might not have been earned in the traditional sense, but make no mistake about Gunnlaugson’s merit.

The Morris-based squad is more than worthy of inclusion in the stacked 18-team battle royal at Markin MacPhail Centre. Indeed, full marks to Gunnlaugson, third Adam Casey, second Matt Wozniak and lead Connor Njegovan, who comprise the eighth-ranked outfit in the country and 13th on the planet.

After cancelling its provincial playdowns — including the Viterra men’s championship in Selkirk — because of ongoing health concerns and restrictions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Curl Manitoba tabbed its 2020 champions to return to the nationals.

Gunnlaugson, seeded eighth at the Brier, said receiving the appointment doesn’t diminishes the significance of battling for the coveted title, particularly when a flashing asterisk already delineates a mostly hijacked 2020-21 curling season.

“It’s disappointing that such a great (Viterra) championship wasn’t possible to run this year. That’s the first thing. But once it became clear how it was all going to shake out, the opportunity to wear the buffalo is extremely exciting. I know when we got our jerseys and kit for the event, it was probably as excited as we’ve been during this whole process,” Gunnlaugson said Wednesday, from self-isolation in his hotel room.

Four-fifths of the squad, including fifth-player Jacques Gauthier, arrived from Winnipeg by convoy in three vehicles Tuesday evening, while Casey, an import from Charlottetown, flew into Calgary on Wednesday.

Gushue embraces uncertainty at unique Brier

Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Mar. 3, 2021

Brad Gushue is a titan in Canadian curling.

No monument — a la Mount Rushmore — exists celebrating the greats of the men's game. If one did, strong consideration would be given to include his image among those carved from the granite.

But the brilliant athlete from St. John's N.L., a perennial winner, high-powered voice of curling in this country, successful entrepreneur and devoted family man also has his frailties.

Seems his daughters, Hayley, 13, and Marissa, 9, put up a far braver face than dad when it came to their first COVID-19 tests.

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“We get to represent our province again and get a bit of a two-for-one, which, again if we had never won before would have been really weird — going without having ever won. But we’ll take the two-for-one and try and improve on our performance from last year.”

The Brier, which begins Friday and wraps up Sunday, March 14, follows closely on the heels of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, which started a run of six competitions in a spectator-free setting at the rink at Canada Olympic Park.

Gunnlaugson won’t be the lone team brandishing some impassioned Manitoba pride.

Mike McEwen slides into his sixth straight Canadian championship, guiding a West St. Paul unit of third Reid Carruthers, second Derek Samagalski and lead Colin Hodgson.

It marks McEwen’s third time bearing the wild-card label, after Curling Canada confirmed his team, along with Kevin Koe of Alberta and Glenn Howard of Ontario as the final entries in early February.

The Brandon product, skipping the fifth-seeded team, maintained the challenge never becomes pedestrian.

“Just like any kid that grew up curling, this is big. I’ve been chasing after a Brier title since I was dreaming about it at 10 years old, and I’m not going to pretend that I have an infinite amount of years left,” he said Wednesday. “Even at 40, I’m very excited to try and do this, especially with some great teammates. To have this opportunity to go at it against the best teams in Canada — many of the best in the world — is amazing.

“Six in a row after a lot of opportunities lost — probably eight or nine — before actually actually making it,” he added. “Getting the sixth opportunity, I’m very happy about that. I know how difficult it can be to get here, especially from a province like Manitoba, so we’re not going to take it lightly. You try and lay it all out there like it’s your last one.”

Gunnlaugson, McEwen (Wild Card 1) and a long list of stellar participants — many competing for the first time since the 2020 Brier in Kingston, Ont., are aiming for the national men’s title, which has been hogged by a couple of giants in the sport, Brad Gushue of St. John’s, N.L., and Kevin Koe of Calgary (Wild Card 2) the past five years.

Gushue hoisted the trophy in his hometown in 2017, repeated in 2018 in Regina and won last year, while Koe staked claim to the Brier in 2016 and again in 2019 (in Brandon).

But a half-dozen others have the proficiency and experience to prevail, including Alberta representative Brendan Bottcher, who has lost the last three Canadian finals, 2014 Olympic gold medallist, 2013 Brier champion and top seed Brad Jacobs of Northern Ontario, No. 2-seed John Epping of Ontario, four-time world champion Glenn Howard of Ontario (Wild Card 3) and 2020 semifinalist Matt Dunstone, a former Winnipegger now skipping Saskatchewan.

Mirroring the Scotties, the Brier field has been expanded to 18 to accommodate teams that had their provincial or territorial championships scrapped, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The field has been split into pools of nine, with seeding based on the 2019-20 Canadian Team Ranking System final standings.

Teams will bash around in a round robin within their respective pools, with the top four in each advancing to the championship round — carrying their records forward — to battle the quartet of teams from the other pool.

McEwen and Gunnlaugson are in Pool A with the likes of Jacobs, Bottcher and Howard, and don’t play on Friday’s opening draw, set for 7:30 p.m.

“It looks like a gauntlet,” McEwen said, laughing. “I looked at Pool B (with heavyweights such as Gushue, Koe, Epping and Dunstone) and thought, ‘Oh, that’s the pool of death,’ and then I looked at ours and it’s like, “Whoa, that’s the pool of death.’

“As far as depth, it looks like the greatest Brier field ever assembled, in my opinion. When you look at the men’s field, there isn’t anyone missing.”

In Kingston, mere weeks before masks and social distancing became the norm as the virus began to take hold in Canada, McEwen finished with a 6-1 record in his pool a year ago but lost three of four contests in the championship round (7-4) before getting eliminated by Epping in a tiebreaker.

Gunnlaugson, meanwhile, was 5-2 to crack the Elite 8 before stumbling badly with four consecutive defeats.

“That definitely left a little bit of a sour taste in our mouth, especially after how good we played in the first half of the week. We probably have ratcheted up the expectations slightly, not ridiculously so. But we’d like to improve on our previous result, and we think we can,” he said. “Our goal is to make it to that championship round again and be a little better prepared, knowing what to expect, and, hopefully, turn some of those losses into wins.

“You’re playing such good teams and it’s inevitable if you don’t play absolutely fantastic — right on top of your game — you’re going to be in trouble.”

The three teams with the cleanest records after the championship round qualify for the playoffs. The frontrunner goes straight to the final (Sunday, March 14, 7:30 p.m.), while the second- and third-place teams collide in the semifinal (March 14, 1:30 p.m.).

The lone survivor earns $100,000, the opportunity to wear the Maple Leaf at the world men’s championship, April 2-11 in the Calgary bubble. There’s also an Olympic Trials berth on the line, as long as the winning team doesn’t already own one.

“There’s been a lot of sacrifice by every, obviously by Curling Canada and its partners to make this happen, but also by the athletes to do this,” said McEwen, whose wife, Dawn, is pregnant with the couple’s second child and missed the Scotties. “It’s an amazing sacrifice that everyone’s put together and I’m just thankful we can do this as a team and all of our competitors can do that.

“Hopefully, we put on a show like no other that Canadian curling fans can relish in. That’s what I’m hoping.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell

Jason Bell
Sports editor

Jason Bell wanted to be a lawyer when he was a kid. The movie The Paper Chase got him hooked on the idea of law school and, possibly, falling in love with someone exactly like Lindsay Wagner (before she went all bionic).

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