Team China in HalifaxBy Dean Gemmell
HALIFAX – A reasonable crowd in here for a weekday afternoon and they saw the gamut, from great shotmaking to some Tuesday League ugliness. Some soft ice picks meant there weren’t many teams on the ice without a hair brush in the mix.
The Czech Republic was really never in it against China, even without Rui Liu standing on the tee line. Sources say Liu is now a father and, apparently, that precludes curling. I’ll let my editor try to explain. (Er, no chance – Ed.)
According to the stats of Gerry Geurts and CurlingZone, Scottish skip Ewen McDonald had a 60% chance of winning when he was up one without the hammer playing the 10th against the USA. I think, however, those stats look pretty shaky when you have a bunch of misses in said 10th end. Then, those stats get better again when you make a super wide in-off on your last throw to force John Shuster to try a Red-Yellow-Yellow run. Count it as a win for Scotland.
The Patch is open, it seems, and I'm headed over there. I fear that if I venture outside it will be snowing, this being Nova Scotia and all.
[Curling Canada photo by Michael Burns – click image to increase viewing size]