Selkirk Masters a fine mess

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This article was published 01/11/2014 (4341 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SELKIRK — Even after the round robin’s final rocks had roared at the Masters Grand Slam of Curling, the playoff picture still looked a little fuzzy.

By the time the brisk preliminary round wrapped up at Selkirk Recreation Complex Friday night, six of the 15 men’s teams had clinched a playoff berth, all with a 3-1 record: Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen, Saskatoon’s Steven Laycock, Calgary’s Kevin Koe, Swiss skip Sven Michel, Toronto’s John Epping and Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue.

In women’s play, a similar story. The golden girls of Team Jennifer Jones clinched on Friday night with their third win of the tournament, Switzerland’s Binia Feltscher finished atop the pack with a perfect 4-0 record and reigning Alberta champ Val Sweeting also held a quarter-final berth. Two-time defending Canadian champion Rachel Homan clinched her playoff spot with a 5-1 win over former Manitoban Chelsea Carey, whose Edmonton foursome fell out of contention with the loss.

That still left a whack of teams tied with a 2-2 record — and it will take a pair of tiebreaker games early this morning to break the logjam.

Bring on the bonus curling. On the women’s side, Ontario’s Sherry Middaugh and Switzerland’s Alina Paetz advanced to the quarter-finals thanks to making some of the closest draws to the button, a common tiebreaker formula. But Winnipeg’s Kristy McDonald, freshly returned to skipping her own team, will have to battle Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni for a playoff spot; Sweden’s Margaretha Sigfridsson and Anna Sidorova will also face off.

Five men’s teams finished the round robin with a 2-2 record, and will fight for one of the final two spots in the 4:30 p.m. quarter-finals.

Reigning Olympic champion Brad Jacobs kept his playoff hopes alive Friday night by orchestrating a big 7-6 win over Sweden’s Niklas Edin, pushing both to 2-2 on the week; he’ll now try to wrest a quarter-final spot from veteran skip Glenn Howard in the 8:30 a.m. tiebreaker.

Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton stayed alive by surviving a do-or-die match against Norway’s Thomas Ulsrud late on Friday afternoon.

With a chance to earn a tiebreaker on the line, Stoughton’s foursome of third Rob Fowler, second Alex Forrest and lead Connor Njegovan threw neat and clean, wrapping up a 8-5 win with a draw-high 93 per cent team shooting success. Now, Stoughton will have to best John Morris in the 8:30 a.m. tiebreaker. The winner will move on to play Edin in the afternoon.

The crush of teams in the middle wasn’t lost on McEwen, who was still waiting to find out who his foursome will play.

“The field is exceptional. There’s some names you thought that were maybe underdogs that are playing to their potential, so they’re making things a little messy,” the skip mused. “Some guys that have really good potential are playing really well, and some of the favourites are on their heels a little bit.”

That doesn’t quite go for his team, which punched their ticket to the playoffs early by winning their first three games. Still, it wouldn’t have been a proper Halloween without a little harmless fright, and McEwen’s crew got theirs on Friday night, as they fell 5-3 to John Morris’ new Calgary-based team.

It wasn’t a pretty game, not really. There were some groaner misses, there was some hinky ice. Whatever it was, they just didn’t click like they have been: indeed, Friday’s match was just their second loss of the season. They’ve won the other 31.

“You can’t win them all, if you don’t play good,” McEwen quipped, after shaking off the loss. “We were kind of a little average there. The ice was a little bit tougher to deal with, and we didn’t pick up a few times on it.”

That said, McEwen, third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld weren’t looking too shabby, through most of the game. After Morris picked up a single in the opening end, the Winnipeggers responded with a deuce in two; after that, the teams traded singles for a few. It was in the sixth where the wheels came off, as a jumble of Morris’ black-handled rocks (Halloween-themed, you see) jammed up the middle of the house.

‘The field is exceptional. There’s some names you thought that were maybe underdogs that are playing to their potential, so they’re making things a little messy’

— skip Mike McEwen

Holding the hammer, McEwen hunted for an out-turn double, but the shooter didn’t roll close enough to the button.

That gave Morris a steal of 1 to take a 4-3 lead, and handed McEwen back the hammer for the penultimate end. Morris orchestrated another single steal in the seventh, then ran McEwen out of rocks to bring on the handshakes. McEwen’s shooting percentage was at a waterlogged 63 per cent — compare that to his 94.7 rate through the whole round robin, the best of all the skips.

“We definitely had control of that game (until the sixth), even though we’d been in some situations where we were maybe fortunate to score,” McEwen said.

“In six, that was a must-score end, and some things, maybe not the fault of our own, happened to get the scoring zone really cluttered. I was probably lucky to even have a shot to score there, and it was a tough one and yeah, didn’t make it.

“It’s tough. When you limit your opportunities, when there’s a whole bunch of clutter around the four-foot, sometimes you get stung, and got stung tonight.”

At least it’s easy to shake it off, when you’re riding high on a 3-1 record and don’t have to wake up early in the morning to play a tiebreaker game. “We’ll just forget about that loss,” McEwen said. “We’ll sit back and see who comes out of all this mess in the morning.”

After the tiebreakers and quarter-finals, the final four teams on both sides will play their semifinals at 9 p.m. tonight, fighting for a chance to play in the Masters Grand Slam of Curling finals on Sunday. They will be broadcast live on Sportsnet.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca