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This article was published 12/11/2010 (5671 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GORDON HUDSON. Ken Watson. Billy Walsh. Don Duguid. Mike Riley. Vic Peters. Kerry Burtnyk. Jeff Stoughton.

And Mike McEwen?

The long line of dominant men’s curling skips in this prov­ince extends almost unbroken through the years. Hudson of the ’20s made way for Watson of the ’30s and ’40s, who stepped aside for Walsh in the ’50’s before Duguid took over in the ’60s and ’70s, who was in turn followed by Riley of the ’80s.

The past 20 years have been a golden era of sorts, domin­ated first by the Big Three of Jeff Stoughton, Kerry Burtnyk and Vic Peters, then the Big 2 of Stoughton and Burtnyk and finally just Stoughton himself as the eight-time Manitoba cham­pion continues to rewrite the record books seemingly every time he steps on the ice.

The question now is whether this province is on the cusp of a new era dominated by a 30-year-old with a spiky haircut, uneven temper and an uncanny knack for finding the four-foot.

McEwen has made noise before, but never like this. The Brandon native had his coming-out party, live and coast-to-coast, at the $100,000 World Cup of Curl­ing last weekend in Windsor, Ont., as his powerhouse Winnipeg foursome — third B.J. Neufeld, second matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld — outlasted the finest field that will be assembled anywhere in the curling world this winter to register the biggest win of McEwen’s career.

The money was big — a $24,000 payday, the richest of McEwen’s career. And the fact they won the final under the hot lights of a live CBC broadcast was even bigger, offering the most compelling evidence yet that McEwen has the most important quality it takes to be an elite skip — the ability to draw the four-foot when your pulse is 140.

But perhaps most compelling of all — and the rea­son why we are talking about McEwen today in the same breath as Watson, Duguid and Stoughton — is who McEwen beat to capture that big purse.

In the round robin, he took down former world champion David Murdoch of Scotland and 2010 Olympic silver medallist Thomas Ulsrud of Norway.

In the playoffs, he did something almost no one has been able to do the last few years — beat Edmonton’s Kevin Martin when money was on the line. And McEwen not only beat Martin — he shellacked the reigning Olympic gold medallists 8-3 in the quarter­finals, hanging a four-ender on Martin in the second end.

And then to cap it all off, McEwen beat the man he will ultimately have to unseat to become the Next One in Manitoba — former world champion Jeff Stoughton of Winnipeg — in the final to complete the run in Windsor.

Add last weekend’s dramatics to a win at another major WCT event in Portage in October — McEwen beat Stoughton in that final too — and the McEwen foursome has fashioned a breakout season so far.

They are atop the World Curling Tour money list this morning, their $51,750 in earnings ahead of every other men’s team in the world, including, yes, even Martin.

Now, Mike McEwen has shown flashes of bril­liance before, of course. He’s a former Manitoba junior and mixed champion, a World University Games champion and a force on the men’s cash tour ever since he hooked up with his current foursome in 2007.

But it has also been an unfortunate anchor around his neck that, until now, McEwen has also demon­strated a knack for losing when the pressure was on.

Now some of that had to do with the opponents he was facing. In 1998, he won Manitoba but lost the semifinal at the Canadian Juniors to Ontario’s John Morris, Martin’s current third and a man now widely regarded as one of the best curlers in the world.

Back as the Manitoba junior champion again three years later, McEwen lost the Canadian Junior final in 2001 to Brad Gushue, who five years later stunned everyone but himself in winning Olympic gold in Turin.

There have been heartbreaks in the men’s game with his current team too — an extra-end loss to Kerry Burtnyk in the 3 vs. 4 game at the 2008 Mani­toba provincials that ultimately catapulted Burtnyk to the Brier at the MTS Centre the next month; back-to-back losses in qualifying games at the 2009 Pre-Trials, when a win in either game would have sent his team to the Canadian Curling Trials; and, most recently, a loss in the final of the 2010 Manitoba men’s provincials to Stoughton.

Put it all together and there have been whispers, until this fall, that maybe McEwen cannot win the big one. McEwen heard the whispers too, but he refused to allow them to become screaming voices in his head.

He speaks, like all good skips, about the ‘we’ of team, but it is clear he is also speaking of the painful journey of paying dues that every skip must make.

“We could have hung our heads for a long time about some of those losses,” McEwen says, “but I think if anything it made us more resilient. We learned from a lot of those mistakes.”

There is a reason all the world’s top skips are in their 30s and 40s — there is a maturity that can only come with experience necessary to play the game at the highest level. Dawn Askin, the lead for Jennifer Jones and McEwen’s partner in life, has watched that process unfold with McEwen for over a decade.

“I knew Mike way back as a junior,” says Askin, “and he had a mighty temper. He’s definitely evolved since then, he’s a much more patient, much more calm player on the ice. That would be the huge thing I’ve noticed about him.”

Stoughton, who has watched that process unfold over the last decade, says McEwen has the inner workings to be one of the game’s greats. “Sure he does. I think we all know that he’s still a pretty shy guy right now,” Stoughton says, “and it takes a little while to get used to all the attention.

“But he’s only getting better at it.”

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It has all combined for what sounds a lot like poise. McEwen says last Sunday’s final against Stoughton “was the most calm I’ve ever felt during a game like that… I think a lot of it is experience, going through a lot of tough losses has taught us some hard lessons.

“For a young guy, there’s kind of a mental bar­rier. Until you’ve actually beaten a Glenn Howard or Kevin Martin or Jeff Stoughton, there’s this mental block and you kind of end up beating yourself in those situations.”

With last weekend’s victory, that block should now be erased, but McEwen has no illusions that some big-money wins on the bonspiel circuit will now elevate him to the same pedestal as the game’s great skips. That promotion — should it come — will only come when he wins on the biggest stage of all, the Brier.

“Even growing up, the one thing — if you’re going to win anything — that’s what you want to win,” McEwen says of the Brier. “In the eyes of the media, the general public, curling fans, even your own mind — until you have that under your belt, something is still missing.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca