Laycock rink brings its A game

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This article was published 20/10/2015 (3938 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Man. — It may not have had the gravitas of a downtrodden political party roaring to a majority government or the beginnings of a Blue Jays comeback, but Steven Laycock was working on some drama of his own Monday night.

The Saskatoon skip completed his own coup at the Canad Inns Men’s Prairie Classic championship, curling out an 8-5 win over Alberta’s Kevin Koe in the final. In so doing, he became the first skip not named Koe or Mike McEwen to win the event since Kerry Burtnyk in 2009 — and how he managed to do it made it all the sweeter.

“Coming through the A event was one of the big things today,” Laycock said, after wrapping up the last of his three Monday playoff wins. “We had hammer in all the games to start, and were really fortunate to have played our best curling on the right day for once.”

For once, indeed. Of 18 previous meetings between the skips since 2011, Laycock had won only four.

“It’s not a favourable record,” he said with a laugh. But Monday, the two-time Saskatchewan champion roared out to a hot start and held it. It helped he didn’t miss much, curling 96 per cent through six ends.

Laycock opened the scoring with a deuce in the first end; Koe’s rink replied with one in the second. In the third, two wonky shots from the Alberta skip gave Laycock a chance to draw for two. That’s when Laycock, third Kirk Muyres, second Colton Flasch and lead Dallan Muyres started feeling pretty good about their chances.

“Getting the deuce right back was a huge break for us,” Laycock said. “It made them gamble a bit. It was actually the third end that created the fifth end.”

First, they had to get through the fourth, where a Laycock laser cleaned out two Koe rocks in the house; Koe replaced one, but the Saskatchewan skip picked it out. The Albertans were forced to play a tap-back for a lonely single, and trailed 4-3 after four ends. The tide was turning; in the fifth, it washed the game away. With Team Laycock sitting firmly in the driver’s seat, Koe pushed. He put his second rock in the top corner of the four-foot, sitting two yellow rocks inside two Laycock blues. The double was there, tightly; Laycock honed in on the shot, took ’em both out, and scored three. He led 7-3 after that fifth end was done.

Afterward, he said never doubted the shot.

“I really liked the way it was looking,” Laycock said. “The big thing was just to commit to it. When you’re aiming for an eighth of a rock and you’re thinking ‘don’t flash it, and give up a steal of two,’ that’s when you’re going to hit way too much of it and give him the steal.”

Oh well, Koe shrugged afterward. It was worth a try.

“We were chasing, and we got it back to where he got a tough shot,” Koe said. “He misses that more than he makes it, I think… It would have been tie game, and anybody’s game. But they played well that game, and deserved to win.”

Around that time, in Toronto, Troy Tulowitzki slammed a homer. In the Tavern United lounge overlooking the sheet where Koe and Laycock were playing, a crowd of mingling curlers blew up cheering. The game on the ice was all but done, and besides, there was a lot of happening in Canada Monday night.

That said, the quartet of Koe, third Marc Kennedy, second Brent Laing and lead Ben Hebert didn’t go quietly: they collected a deuce in the sixth to claw up the scoreboard. But a single for Laycock in seven more or less erased any hope for a game-changing end. They shook after running out of rocks in the eighth.

So that was the end of this surprising men’s event, one in which the ice was roundly agreed to be beautiful, but half of the heavyweights that slid on it didn’t survive to Monday’s playoffs. It wasn’t because they ran into each other on the brink; it’s that they were toppled by unexpected challengers.

The deadliest of those was Charley Thomas, ranked 25th in the world on overall merit points. In the B event, he gunned down Mark Kean, Glenn Howard, McEwen and reigning world champion Niklas Edin in succession; in the quarter-final, he sent Japanese champion Yusuke Morozumi packing 6-5.

Laycock finally stopped the young Albertans in the semi, helped by a slew of Thomas misses in the first three ends. Still, a team on the rise.

“It’s definitely up there with one of the hardest (win streaks),” Thomas said, after bowing out of the race. “It definitely feels great to have beaten that many good teams.”

Or consider the case of Jeff Hartung, a seasoned 51-year-old from Langernburg, Sask., skipping a team with two of his sons. Although he’d been to the Prairie Classic many times, he’d never qualified until now; he even did it after losing his first two matches, and taking the long way through the C event.

On the edge, he pulled off a dramatic Sunday-night win over Edin, knocking the latter out of contention and earning the right to face Jacobs in the playoffs. In the quarter-final, Jacobs cruised 7-2 over Hartung in six ends.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca