Stoughton gives it the ol’ 1-2

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This article was published 11/03/2011 (5517 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LONDON, Ont. — Jeff Stoughton is just two wins away from delivering Manitoba its first Canadian men’s curling championship in 12 years.

Winnipeg’s Stoughton will play rival Brad Gushue of Newfoundland in the coveted Page playoff 1 vs. 2 game at the Tim Hortons Brier tonight (TSN, 6:30 p.m.), with the winner advancing straight to Sunday’s Brier final.

The game will be a rematch of the December 2005 Canadian Curling Trials final in Halifax that Gushue won en route to Olympic gold in Turin the following February.

And it will also be a rematch of Thursday morning’s round-robin game between the two teams, which Stoughton lost 8-5 largely due to a highly questionable decision to go for a dicey double-takeout in the eighth end that ultimately turned the game around with a Newfoundland three-ender.

Stoughton kicked himself afterward.

“It was just a friggin’ bonehead shot in eight,” Stoughton said. “It was the stupidest shot. It was a junior-B group piece of crap.”

While both Manitoba and Newfoundland finished the round robin at 9-2, Newfoundland was awarded first place overall and the hammer in their showdown with Manitoba tonight thanks to Thursday morning’s win.

Gushue is expecting no similar charitable giving from Stoughton tonight. “That was a little hiccup I won’t expect to see again,” Gushue said.

All of which was pretty much what Stoughton was saying by day’s end too. Asked point-blank Thursday night if he’s going to win the Brier this weekend, Stoughton was equally blunt. “Absolutely,” Stoughton replied.

“We only came here for one thing and that’s to win… It’s a great feeling — we’re two wins away from winning this Brier.”

In their last 10 games against each other, dating back to the 2008-09 cashspiel season, Gushue and Stoughton are 5-5.

Thursday’s loss to Newfoundland could have been much costlier for Manitoba than just hammer advantage tonight, threatening at one point to drop them to Saturday’s sudden-death 3 vs. 4 game.

But the combination of an 8-4 Manitoba win over Quebec later on Thursday coupled with a 6-5 Alberta win over Ontario vaulted Manitoba back into the 1-2 game against Newfoundland.

Stoughton was asked if Alberta’s win over Ontario represented the first time that Alberta skip Kevin Martin had done a favour for him. “It may well have been,” said Stoughton with a laugh. “On a curling sheet? Probably.”

But while Martin did Stoughton a favour, he did no favour for himself as he still ended up in the 3-4 game despite the victory over Ontario’s Glenn Howard.

And that created perhaps the biggest surprise of this event — that neither of the two pre-event favourites, Howard and Martin, qualified for tonight’s 1-2 game.

With the win over Howard, Martin also finished the round-robin with a 9-2 record, while Ontario finished at 8-3.

But because Alberta had been beaten by both Manitoba and Newfoundland during the round robin, Alberta was relegated to third place and the 3-4 game against Howard, where the winner advances to Saturday night’s semifinal against the loser of tonight’s Manitoba-Newfoundland matchup.

Martin, who made a last-rock takeout to win Thursday night, will carry a huge advantage into that rematch with Ontario. Howard, playing as a skip, has never beaten Martin in the Brier, a drought that is now 0-7.

“It certainly can’t hurt,” Martin said of his dominance over Howard. “But I don’t think that matters. We just have to come out and play like we did tonight.”

Howard wasn’t sugar-coating the magnitude of the loss.

“It was a huge game — we win that and we’re in the 1-2 game. Now, we have to go through the hard route. It doesn’t matter who we play now — we’ll have to win three games in a row.

“We made him earn it. He had to make a tough shot in the end… But the bottom line is he made it and we lost another one to Kevin Martin.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca