Poor metrics in assessing curling strength

It would appear that every aspiring curling team in Canada broke up last week, with the hope of finding that special chemistry that will allow them to reach the top spot on the Olympic podium four years from now.

This has become a tradition every four years, after a team doesn’t make the Olympics—and sometimes even when they do—they shuffle the deck.

The changes have also sparked renewed debate around “residency” rules, a uniquely Canadian construct that requires teams that play down to qualify for the nationals (Scotties or Brier) to be from the same province. The rules have been eased over the past few years to allow “birthright” (the right to play for the province of your birth, regardless of residence) and to allow for one “import” per team (one player from another province). The top teams—and certain podcasts—will say this limits their ability to find top talent for the team, and maybe this is partially to blame for Canada’s decreasing success at the international level.

This notion of residency has also entered the debate about reforming the STOH and Brier, as an increasing amount of non-provincially based teams apply pressure to change the format to admit more “Wild Card” teams.

I’m calling bullshit here—yet again—as I am struggling to give these arguments much weight. Here is why.

If I were 20-30 years younger, and decided that I had the talent to take a serious run at the Olympics and at being the best team in the world, here is a list of what I would need:

1. A team of four very talented, experienced players.

2. Support of top-tier coaching.

3. Money—to allow us to play in all the big events.

4. Time (ideally no day job to keep you busy).

5. MORE time for team practice sessions—on good ice of course—with all four members of the team working together.

I think in today’s game you need all five to be at the top.

Over the years, I have especially seen the value of No. 5. My team in particular has chosen to play less tournaments, and spend more time together practicing as a team. The time we spend together on the ice practicing has proven to be way more valuable than playing ’spiel after ’spiel after ’spiel.

If I were to assemble four players from four different provinces, I have no idea how a team could logistically practice together more than a few times each year, given the aggressive tournament schedules the top teams typically engage in. These teams play 20-plus weekends per year when you include Slams, non-Slam tournaments, and playdowns. I think the top teams have one through four on my list, but No. 5 requires you to be from the same part of the country.

When I look at the top teams outside of Canada who have managed to reach the summit of world curling—like Sweden (Niklas Edin and Anna Hasselborg) and Scotland (Bruce Mouat and Eve Muirhead) we can learn from their success. Unless I am mistaken, both have considerable opportunities to practice together for a significant part of each season. They have all five elements on my list.

To me, this means teams need to live in the same area—at least some of the time—to be able to manage consistent training and travel to events. Maybe it means renting a team apartment for a significant part of a curling season for use when training together. From this perspective, I don’t see how a team could reach this level without residing in the same area for a big part of the season.

For 95% of the teams in Canada, residency rules, as they are written, are not an issue. For the few that feel this limits their ability to reach the top, I would suggest they spend less time fighting residency rules and more time trying to reside close to each other!

In other words, if Canada wants to be the best … keep residency rules.

Also, while we are at it, stop comparing Canada to Sweden or Switzerland when talking about the health of the game. There are more curlers in the Greater Toronto Area than in all of Sweden. The success of the top teams is a poor metric to use to assess the strength of curling. Being a top team in the world today is about the five points I’ve cited, not the pool of players you can draw from.