Fourth-ranked Kaitlyn Lawes takes final spot in 18-team field for upcoming Scotties

OTTAWA - The Winnipeg-based team skipped by Kaitlyn Lawes has claimed the final spot in the 18-team field for the upcoming Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

Lawes, Selena Njegovan, Jocelyn Peterman and Kristin Gordon received the last pre-qualification spot as the highest-ranked team that hadn't qualified via provincial/territorial playdowns, Curling Canada said Monday.

The berth became available when the pre-qualified team skipped by Kerri Einarson replaced Rachel Homan's rink as the Canadian entry. Homan won't defend her title as she will be preparing to represent Canada at the Milan Cortina Olympics next month.

Lawes, who fell to Kelsey Calvert in the recent Manitoba final, holds the No. 4 position in the latest Canadian rankings (151.450 points). She edged No. 5 Serena Gray-Withers of Alberta (151.225) by less than a quarter-point for the spot.

Einarson falls in Players’ Championship final on home ice

Kerri Einarson has waited a long time for a chance to win a Grand Slam of Curling event in her home province. Unfortunately for the Gimli-based skip, raising a trophy with loads of family and friends in the stands wasn’t meant to be on Sunday.

Chance meeting with Team Gim paved way for Lee’s Korea Curling Federation role

STEINBACH — Morris is a long ways away from South Korea.

So, when Team Eun-ji Gim checked into the Stampede Inn ahead of the 2018 DeKalb Superspiel at the Morris Curling Club, they weren’t expecting to see a fellow Korean behind the front desk in Min Lee.

“Usually, you see Koreans in bigger cities, but it was a really small town, and out of nowhere, there was a Korean guy at the hotel we happened to be staying in,” said Gim, through Lee’s translating, at the Players’ Championship in Steinbach at the Southeast Event Centre.

“So, it was really surprising. But we were glad someone who speaks the same language was there.”

Olympic-bound skip credits Carruthers reigniting his love for the game

STEINBACH — The road back to the Olympics involved an important pit stop in Manitoba for Brad Jacobs.

The longtime Northern Ontario skip was burnt out and started the quadrennial by taking a break from the sport. In fact, when the 2021-22 Grand Slam season ended, Jacobs wasn’t so sure if he’d ever commit to a full-time schedule again.

Then, a few months later, he got a phone call from one of Manitoba’s most decorated curlers: Reid Carruthers.

After parting ways with third Jason Gunnlaugson, Carruthers was in a jam and called up Jacobs to see if he’d be open to sparing at the remaining Grand Slam events on the schedule.

B.C. skip Taylor Reese-Hansen’s breakout season will include Scotties debut

When Taylor Reese-Hansen was asked to provide a life goal for her yearbook entry in Grade 12, an appearance at the Canadian women's curling championship made the list.

It's an ambition the 28-year-old skip will finally realize this month in Mississauga, Ont.

"I put (down) I want to go to the Scotties," said Reese-Hansen. "So it's really cool and a full-circle moment for all of us to all be going and to represent B.C." 

Reese-Hansen's Victoria-based team secured the berth in the provincial final last weekend with a 9-5 win over Corryn Brown of Kamloops. 

Steinbach hits it out of the park as Grand Slam host

STEINBACH —The Grand Slam of Curling hasn’t even left town yet and they’re already thinking about coming back to Steinbach.

“It’s got that wow factor walking in here,” said Jenni Cram, the GSOC’s communications director on Day 1 of the Players’ Championship inside the Southeast Event Centre.

Tuesday marked the GSOC’s return to Manitoba ice for the first time in eight years. With the $75-million arena opening in August and now being an option, the world’s best curlers might find themselves chowing down on Mennonite classics such as Vereniki and Schinka Fleisch a lot more frequently.

“We’ve been eager to come back to Manitoba. It’s been far too long, but it was a matter of finding the right venue,” said Cram.

Grand Slam of Curling returns to Manitoba Tuesday with Players’ Championship

It’s a shame how rarely Manitoba’s elite curlers get to play in their home province.

Gimli’s Kerri Einarson hasn’t thrown a competitive rock around these parts since early 2020 when she bested Jennifer Jones in the provincial final in Rivers.

It’s also been far too long for Winnipeggers Mike McEwen (2022 provincials in Selkirk) and Matt Dunstone (2023 provincials in Neepawa) who have gotten used to travelling coast-to-coast annually without playing in the Keystone Province.

The good news is the drought ends this week with Steinbach hosting the Grand Slam of Curling’s (GSOC) Crown Royal Players’ Championship inside the Southeast Event Centre. The action kicks off Tuesday and runs through Sunday featuring the top 12 men’s and top 12 women’s teams in the world battling it out for a combined prize purse of $480,000.

Peterson rink wins Manitoba to earn spot in Scotties Tournament of Hearts

RIVERS — Kelsey Calvert has enough provincial finalist trophies.

She knew it’d take her best effort to avoid a fifth on Sunday, and that might not have been enough against an incredible Kaitlyn Lawes team. But the skip put Team Beth Peterson into position to have the hammer headed to an extra end, and suddenly won the RME Women of the Rings final 9-7 when Lawes tapped her stone onto the pin.

The back-to-back provincial women’s curling finalists soaked up their long-awaited championship moment.

“We’re thrilled,” said Calvert, who lost the 2019 and 2020 Alberta finals before moving to Manitoba in 2023 and now lives in Carberry, married to former world junior champion Braden Calvert.

In The Rings: Change coming to curling scene with lineup moves and Rock League

The Montana's Canadian Curling Trials did more than just determine this country's representatives for the Winter Olympics. 

It also served as a valuable opportunity for up-and-coming players to get a taste of what it's like to compete at curling's biggest domestic competition of the quadrennial. 

Rachel Homan and Brad Jacobs skipped their teams to victory last November in Halifax and will wear the Maple Leaf at the upcoming Milan Cortina Games. For younger skips like Jordon McDonald, Kayla Skrlik, Rylan Kleiter and Selena Sturmay, it was a chance to play a high-profile event against some of the best teams in the country. 

That's something that could pay off down the road, especially since Canada's curling depth will be impacted with some members of the sport's older guard planning to hang up their brooms. 

Olympic gold medallist and three-time Brier champ Harnden to retire at end of season

TORONTO - E.J. Harnden first fell in love with curling while watching his father compete at a hometown Brier in 1990 at the Sault Memorial Gardens.

"I was just hooked," Harnden said Monday. "I was just like, 'This is something I want to do.'"

The experience helped set him on a path that would include an Olympic gold medal and three national titles over a 15-year run as one of the sport's best front-end players.

Harnden, who plays second for Matt Dunstone's Winnipeg-based team, announced Sunday on social media that this will be his last competitive season.

Canadian curler E.J. Harnden to retire from competition at end of season

Canadian curler and Olympic champion E.J. Harnden is calling it a career.

Harnden announced Sunday in an Instagram post that he is playing his final full season of competitive curling.

The 42-year-old from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., currently plays second on Matt Dunstone’s Winnipeg-based team alongside his brother and lead Ryan Harnden.

The Harnden brothers won Olympic gold at the 2014 Sochi Games on a team skipped by their cousin Brad Jacobs.

Tirinzoni tops Fujisawa to win women’s curling final at HearingLife Canadian Open

SASKATOON - Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni defeated Japan's Satsuki Fujisawa 7-1 in the women's final at the HearingLife Canadian Open in curling action on Sunday.

Tirinzoni jumped out to a 2-0 lead after the first end before Fujisawa trimmed the deficit to one in the second.

After a scoreless third, Tirinzoni's rink scored five points across the next three ends, including a triple in the sixth.

The second-seeded Tirinzoni defeated Japan's Sayaka Yoshimura 5-4 in Saturday's semifinal to advance into Sunday's final.

Schwaller to play Whyte, Fujisawa to face Tirinzoni in Grand Slam finals

SASKATOON - Yannick Schwaller of Geneva, Switzerland, punched his ticket to Sunday's final at the HearingLife Canadian Open with a 7-5 win Saturday night over John Shuster of Duluth, Minn.

Schwaller, who defeated Marc Muskatewitz of Germany 7-1 in Saturday's earlier quarterfinals, scored three in the opening end against Shuster. He went up 4-1 in the third with a single, but Shuster scored a deuce in the fourth, and stole one in the fifth to tie the game 4-4 after five ends.

But Schwaller counted two in the sixth, held Shuster to a single in the seventh, and scored one in the eighth to seal the deal in the Grand Slam of Curling competition at Merlis Belsher Place.

Schwaller will face Ross Whyte in the final after he knocked off Bruce Mouat 6-4 in an all Scotland semifinal. Whyte beat Brad Jacobs of Calgary 8-6 in Saturday's quarterfinals.

World’s first professional curling league set to throw first stone in April

The world’s first professional curling league is hoping to change the future of the sport.

The Curling Group — the owners of the Grand Slam of Curling — announced back in the spring their intentions to start the Rock League and, on Tuesday, they revealed the 30 men and 30 women from around the globe who will make up the six teams of 10 (five men and five women) who will compete.

Curling legends and competition advisors Jennifer Jones and John Morris were tasked with selecting the 60 players and splitting them into their respective groups.

“It’s been over the course of a year where we’ve gone back and forth in trying to formulate the teams with new, energizing talent, and some names that have been around for a long time,” said Jones in an interview with the Free Press.

Grand Slam of Curling continues to tweak shootout, extra end experiment

The Grand Slam of Curling continues to tinker with a draw-to-the-button shootout to replace extra ends, but the latter is making a comeback in Saskatoon this week.

A shootout was implemented for the preliminary round and tiebreakers at the season-opening AMJ Masters in September, and then expanded to include playoffs in October's Co-op Tour Challenge and November's Kioti GSOC Tahoe.

The change produced dramatic moments in big games. Swedish skip Anna Hasselborg drew to the button in a women's semifinal in the Tour Challenge, but Canada's Rachel Homan covered the pinhole to advance in Nisku, Alta.

Scotland's Bruce Mouat outdrew Canada's Matt Dunstone by three millimetres to take the men's final in Tahoe.