Welcome upsets at PBI and more

The third edition of the PointsBet Invitational provided a mixed bag of observations.

Some things looked the same, while other things shone brightly as differentials.

We saw more lower-ranked teams break through with victories over their higher-seeded opponents. 

Last year Christina Black’s Halifax foursome scored the noisiest upset wins; this time around the surprise results were a bit more plentiful, and came from younger teams.

Jordon McDonald of Winnipeg was seeded 13th (!) yet defeated city rival Matt Dunstone 8-5 and Kevin Koe’s three-man outfit 8-4 before losing the men’s semifinal (9-7) to Brad Gushue.

The McDonald squad coulda/shoulda won that match as well. Big impression made.

Meanwhile, low-seeded Ally MacNutt of Halifax, the defending Canadian junior champion, scored an upset over Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson before falling to the women’s defending champs skipped by Rachel Homan of Ottawa.

Einarson’s squad is wracked by chaos this season; Shannon Birchard is out with injury (she was replaced by mixed doubles specialist Laura Walker) and Brian Harris is still awaiting the verdict of her appeal for a doping suspension.

Quebec’s Team Felix Asselin (#11) isn’t particularly young—having added the unretired 2006 Brier champ Jean-Michel Ménard at third—but they did bounce the two-time defending champion, Reid Carruthers, 5-4 in their opening match.

If gamblers were looking for the best upset option, that matchup was probably it.

The game itself was confusing to watch as both squads sported near-identical blue and black colours.

Blue and black was a uniform pestilence last season; a vile scourge affecting so many teams that I had to write about it.

Hopefully more foursomes have made apparel updates in 2024-25 and chosen different colour schemes.

We shall see.

Team Homan is undefeated so far this fall, after going 67-7 last season. Their last loss came in the Players’ Championship semifinal back in April, to eventual champion Silvana Tirinzoni.

In Calgary, Homan and Co. outscored their four opponents by a total margin of 37-14.

They’re the first women’s titleholders to repeat the following season.

Don’t look now, but new PBI men’s champion Mike McEwen is just about as hot as the Homanators.

Saskatchewan’s Brier finalists have won three of their four tournaments this fall. They’re 18-4 on the season and they absolutely pounded their PointBet opponents by a total score of 39-12.

When you consider their thumping of the Brads—Jacobs (10-3) and Gushue (8-3)—it’s all the more impressive.

The two event finalists scored $26,000 for their 3-1 records; not bad at all. Five thousand bucks was also disbursed to every team to defray expenses for the single-knockout event; good stuff.

Props to Gushue for the trick-shot throw to end the men’s final.

Which he made, by the way.

Many of the PBI women’s and men’s teams are now in Charlottetown, where the first Grand Slam tourney—the HearingLife Tour Challenge—gets underway on Tuesday.

That’s the double Slam, featuring a full field of Tier 2 squads vying for cash plus their chance to compete in the Tier 1 field of a future Slam.

In case you missed the news, every Slam game on every sheet is now streamed, for free, by series owners The Curling Group. Story below.