Mike McEwen clinches Elite 10 bonspiel title

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This article was published 18/03/2018 (2737 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They say breaking up is hard to do, but the looming dissolution of Team Mike McEwen had only positive effects for the four-man crew over the weekend.

Chalk it up to a sense of relief the secret is out.

McEwen capped off a perfect run at a Grand Slam tour event in Winnipeg with a memorable and lucrative victory Sunday morning, wrapping up the Elite 10 bonspiel title with a convincing 2-up triumph over reigning two-time Canadian men’s champion Brad Gushue of St. John’s, N.L.

The Fort Rouge team, with McEwen at skip, third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld, put in a nearly flawless performance in front of a boisterous hometown crowd at St. James Civic Centre.

“Wow, the guys in front of me, their rock positioning in the first half was so good. We were all over them,” said McEwen. “The guys play so good in front of me and gave me a chance to make some really good placement shots, and they judged them so well. Brad was facing shots with such a high degree of difficulty that first half.”

The match play-style format — the team that either scored multiple points with the hammer or stole at least one point without the hammer ‘won’ the end — used a five-rock free guard zone to jam up the front and spark plenty of offence and good chances to steal.

Placing stones with precision was key, and the champions shot the lights out — registering a combined 90 per cent accuracy.

“It was like that all week. The guys were just tremendous,” said McEwen, whose team earned $28,000 and qualified for the tour’s season-ending Champions Cup in Calgary in late April.

Gushue’s team of Mark Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker shot just 74 per cent. The veteran skip was in a heap of trouble every time he crouched in the hack and couldn’t wiggle out, finishing an uncharacteristically low 56 per cent.

McEwen went 6-0 at the four-day tour event, including round-robin wins over Canadian Olympian Kevin Koe of Calgary and PyeongChang gold medallist John Shuster of Minnesota. They beat Ontario’s Glenn Howard in a Saturday semi-final.

So, just two more ‘spiels remain for McEwen, whose squad heads to Toronto in mid-April for the Players Championship — the only Grand Slam ‘major’ event to elude the world-class team.

The squad is splitting at the end of the season after 11 years together — but will go down as one of the province’s all-time greats, capturing back-to-back Manitoba titles (2016 and ’17), competing at three straight Briers and chalking up a pile of Grand Slam and World Curling Tour titles. The team is still ranked fifth on the WCT’s order of merit.

The news broke Tuesday, just days after they missed the playoffs at the Brier in Regina. None of the players has indicated publicly what the future holds for their individual competitive careers.

McEwen said he noticed a looseness to their play, almost a collective sense of relief that a Brier post-mortem and, ultimately, the decision to go their separate ways, was behind them.

“Depending on how our chat went at the start of the week, it could have gone the other way. But everybody was kind of in the same place and it ended up being a good things for us, to clear the air,” he said. “It’s like we could be free and enjoy the sport to its fullest again. It hasn’t been like that for a while. It’s been a grind.”

A suggestion was posed in jest that, perhaps, the team should have finalized its intentions before the Brier pressure-cooker.

“You may be not wrong,” McEwen said, grinning. “That would have shocked the world. But, man, who knows? It certainly didn’t hurt us this week when it came out.”

The Winnipeggers stole in the first and seconds for an early 2-up lead over Gushue. In the fourth, McEwen made an angle-raise to rip out an opposition rock and score a deuce to move 3-up at the half-way point of the eight-end contest. By the seventh end, it was over, signalling high-fives and hugs on the ice, and a whole lot of selfies taken with family and friends.

“It’s probably the last time they’ll watch us as a team, so it’s special,” said B.J. Neufeld. “A really great performance by us, front to back.”

He admitted, their last six weeks together will include a mix of emotions.

“I didn’t feel it this event, although reading a lot of the posts on our Facebook page made me a little bit teary-eyed,” B.J. said. “You don’t realize how much people care about you and your team, so it’s a bit humbling and overwhelming. But as we get closer to the end, I’m sure the emotions will build a little bit more and it’ll sink in that this is the end for this team.”

Said McEwen on the response to their break-up: “It’s probably hit 100,000 views on our Facebook page. I didn’t realize the effect and the following and the impact we had on curling. It’s very humbling to see people really sad… we’re very appreciative of the outpouring of support.”

Gushue, meanwhile, hasn’t been home since since the end of February and is relishing about 10 days away from the rink. The team is out of gas, physically and emotionally, he said.

“That was a bad game, all around. I thought our team played really poorly and then the exact opposite for Mike’s team. I was impressed with how well they performed. They were very good,” said Gushue. “Our team is tired. The intensity wasn’t there. There was some second-guessing that normally doesn’t happen with our team, so I think we’re on fumes right now.”

Gushue, who beat Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher in the national final just eight days ago, represents Canada at the world men’s championship in Las Vegas, beginning March 31.

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: WFPJasonBell