McEwen clear favourite at Viterra

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This article was published 23/01/2020 (2389 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While the Manitoba women’s curling championship is shaping up to be a three-way brawl for the buffalo jacket, the men’s side looks different: there are many talented contenders, but no doubt on which is the hands-down favourite.

Mike McEwen will lead the 32-team field next month, when the 2020 Viterra Championship kicks off in Winnipeg. It’s a fine place to be for the defending Manitoba champ, fresh off a semifinal finish at the Canadian Open, now coming into a hometown provincial with a tight grip on the No. 1 seed.

“It doesn’t get much better than that,” third Reid Carruthers said, at a CurlManitoba news conference Wednesday morning. “We’re playing about as well as we have been. Our consistency is up from last year, so we’re excited to defend our Viterra title, and we’ll see what happens in two weeks.”

Being this much of a target is a familiar spot for the West St. Paul team of McEwen, Carruthers, second Derek Samagalski and lead Colin Hodgson; the last time a team that wasn’t skipped by McEwen or Carruthers won a provincial title was Jeff Stoughton’s last run at the buffalo in 2014.

What could provide the fireworks this year, though, are the teams jostling to unseat them. Chief among those is second-seed Jason Gunnlaugson, ranked seventh in Canada after a solid tour season; his Morris team recently soared undefeated through a bonspiel in Arizona.

In third and fourth place are two rising young talents in Tanner Horgan and Braden Calvert. Horgan, a 21-year-old dynamo formerly of Northern Ontario, hopped aboard a Manitoba-based team last year and has had some success on tour; former Manitoba junior champ Calvert, 24, is also a promising contender.

“We’ve done a really good job in Manitoba of bringing up some really young, good curlers, and we’re starting to see them transition well in the men’s,” Gunnlaugson third Connor Njegovan said. “It’s just getting harder and harder.”

Veteran William Lyburn, whose Granite team took McEwen to the Viterra final last year, comes in as fifth seed.

Any of those teams could unseat McEwen, should they get a chance. In fact, two of them recently have. Horgan beat McEwen in the final of November’s DEKALB Superspiel in Morris; early in the season, Gunnlaugson knocked him out of the quarterfinal at the Granite’s Mother Club Fall Curling Classic.

“We know that if we play well we’re going to probably see them on the Sunday,” Njegovan says.

“It’s just going to be focusing on us being good enough. We know that Mike on a Sunday at the Viterra is going to be good, so we’re going to have to play well, and I believe we’ve got the players to do that.”

The 2020 Viterra Championship runs from Feb. 4 to 9 at the Eric Coy Arena in Charleswood.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

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