Carruthers storms into final

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This article was published 11/02/2023 (1197 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Reid Carruthers did not expect to go to bed Saturday night with a spot in the Manitoba men’s provincial final locked up.

It looked like a near-impossible task as Carruthers and his three-man team featuring Derek Samagalski and Connor Njegovan started the day at Neepawa’s Yellowhead Community Rec Centre trailing Brandon’s Steve Irwin 7-1 after four ends. But somehow, someway the Carruthers rink clawed back by scoring eight unanswered points in the next four frames en route to escaping with a 10-8 victory. The win pushed Carruthers to the Page playoff 1 vs. 1 game that night against Braden Calvert. Carruthers was down 4-2 heading into the eighth before storming back to win 7-4.

The clutch comebacks send Carruthers to Sunday’s championship game at 2 p.m. He’ll play the winner of Calvert and No. 1 seed Matt Dunstone who meet at 9 a.m. in semifinal action.

Carruthers has been a mainstay at provincials for nearly 20 years and he can’t recall another instance where he came back from six points down.

“Our team’s got a pretty good attitude overall and we hung in there. I’m thrilled. We got some breaks, obviously, along the way. We probably should’ve lost the game tonight, but we made some big shots when we needed to and put some pressure on the other teams today and it worked to our advantage,” Carruthers told the Free Press.

“Sometimes you just gotta roll with it and take advantage of those breaks. Aside from buying a lotto (ticket), I just gotta keep going.”

The biggest break of all for Carruthers, the event’s No. 2 seed, came in the ninth end against Calvert with the score tied 4-4. Carruthers had three rocks sitting in the house, but Calvert had the hammer. All Calvert had to do was place his final shot in the four-foot to score a single, but instead, he came up short and missed the house entirely to gift Carruthers a steal of three. In the previous end, Carruthers hit a brilliant shot to score a pair to tie things up.

“Honestly, it looked like it picked or was within a fresh spot maybe. I’m not sure if he was in the identical draw spot to the shot before, but it just seemed to curl. I don’t know, it looked like a pretty good throw, but the ice has been mildly tricky to say the least,” said Carruthers.

“I think the ice is great, but there seems to be a bit of a humidity issue with the ice and that’s what’s wreaking a little bit of havoc.”

Fifth-seeded Calvert, a former world junior champion who hails from Carberry, made it to the 1-1 game by beating Dunstone 8-4 in the early draw. The result put Dunstone in danger and sent him to the B-side where he had to outlast No. 3 Ryan Wiebe in an elimination game in the afternoon. Dunstone bounced back in a big way by taking down Wiebe 7-1. From there, Dunstone had to get past Irwin — the only team to beat Carruthers this week — to make it to the semifinal. Dunstone rolled past Irwin as the Winnipegger cruised to an 8-2 victory.

“I guess we came out a little flat this morning. We weren’t the team that we know we are, and I think that lit a fire under our butt,” Dunstone said. “We had one choice we could make this afternoon and it was either we sink, or swim and we chose to swim. So, I’m very proud of my boys for doing that and obviously it puts us in a good position to win tomorrow.”

This weekend marked the fifth time Irwin, now 40, has made it to the final four. He had to beat fourth-ranked Corey Chambers 9-8 in an extra end to make it there this time.

“Going into this, if you told us we’d be in the final four we’d be pretty happy with that,” Irwin said. “We had Reid on the ropes this morning which would’ve put us in a great position, but we let that one slip away and that one stings a lot. We snuck one out this afternoon (against Chambers) before running into a freight train tonight. (Dunstone) played unreal and they’re going to be tough (today).”

Similar to Irwin, Wiebe fell victim to the top two teams. The young rink from Fort Rouge was sent home after losing playoff games to both Carruthers and Dunstone. The 22-year-old Wiebe, who arrived in Neepawa ranked 10th in the Canadian Team Ranking System, made it to the semifinal last year in Selkirk before losing to eventual winner Mike McEwen.

“Full credit to both of those teams. They’re exceptional. They play with such poise. If you’re an outsider watching those games, you can see their experience compared to ours. They play such controlled games and it just feels like every time we play these guys they play so well,” said Wiebe.

“I think in the next year, in the next couple of years, when we get better as a team and play in more of these big events and gain experience, I think we’ll have a lot closer games and maybe we’ll start winning some of these games. It does seem whenever we play Carruthers and Dunstone they bring their A-game, and their A-game is pretty good.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31