Emotional Curling Weekend

Our pre-playoff Champions Cup story set the table for an emotional weekend and boy, did that weekend deliver.

Anna Hasselborg’s Swedish team made a stirring comeback to steal three for an 8-5 win over Jennifer Jones, and with Jones’ 1-4 weekend complete, that was it for the career of lead Dawn McEwen. 

What scenes.

And what a final few months for Jones. After a couple of disappointing seasons everything 2021-22 was drilled down to one goal, which she and her teammates accomplished: winning the Canadian Olympic Trials.

It was great to see McEwen make a later appearance as a guest commentator on Sportsnet. More leads in the booth, please.

One sheet over, Brendan Bottcher’s foursome—with Pat Janssen now at third, you’ll recall—defeated Sweden’s Niklas Edin 8-3 to put his squad into the playoffs, extending their final tournament.

On the next sheet, another 4-0 team ended up 4-1 as Brad Jacobs lost to Brad Gushue by a 7-4 scoreline. That pushed the Gushue team’s record to 3-2 and also got them into the playoff picture.

In the quarterfinals, Gushue dispatched Bottcher 6-3. What a season for Bottcher—a poor one overall, particularly at the Olympic Trials, which led to the firing of third Darren Moulding and wave of anti-Bottcher sentiment from many curling fans.

Even the team’s once-vaunted Twitter account felt the sting of rejection, as engagement took a nosedive.

Two women’s quarterfinals brought more tears. Kerri Einarson’s foursome, which had won a tiebreaker over Korea’s EunJung Kim that morning, defeated Rachel Homan 5-3 and that was it for the immediate career of lead Joanne Courtney.

Courtney was first recruited from Val Sweeting’s Alberta team, which qualified for the 2013 Olympic Trials and then lost the 2014 Canadian final to Homan.

Courtney is now training to be a triathlete of sorts ... not bad for someone who couldn’t really swim a few weeks ago.

We think she’ll be back on the ice in the future, but who knows? 

In the other quarterfinal of note, Un-Chi Gim’s Korean foursome walloped and eliminated Winnipeg’s Tracy Fleury 8-3, after running out to an early 5-0 lead.

With all the fuss over McEwen and Courtney, this team’s final hugfest fell under the radar. But what a season for the Fleurys, who are all going their separate ways next year.

Ranked No. 1 in the world for most of the last two pandemic years, they dominated recent Slams and also crushed the round-robin of the Olympic Trials. Their loss in the final to Jones was an absolute shocker—first they dodged the loss in the 10th end when Jones missed her shot for the championship, then it was Fleury’s turn to miss the trip to Beijing on her last stone of the extra-end.

That also wraps up two Olympic cycles—eight years in total—for Selena Njegovan, Liz Fyfe and Kristin McCuish, who had a fine few seasons backing Kerri Einarson. Remember that?

The semifinals also marked the end of the road for the three-time and defending world women’s champions, as Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni was upset 5-4 by Gim.

The question of who Tirinzoni and Alina Paetz will recruit for their new front end is still to be answered … but for now, let’s just marvel at this team.

The twin playoff losses at the Olympic Winter Games will haunt them, but don’t forget how they competed in the Swiss championships just weeks later and won, and then repeated as world champions. Again.

Next door showcased Koe versus Jacobs, and and the result marked the Northern Ontario team’s turn to say farewell. Koe’s 4-3 win left the brush brothers—E.J. and Ryan Harnden—to hug it out with their skipper and three-year third Marc Kennedy, and that closes a mighty curling chapter indeed.

Jacobs and the Harnden brothers first appeared at a Brier way back in 2008 (!) … as father Eric Harnden skipped, and Jacobs was the alternate. The Vancouver Olympic year of 2010 marked their first Brier appearance with Jacobs skipping, and the rest is history … and a whole lot of Sault Ste. Marie men’s domination, much to the frustration of Thunder Bay, the traditional northern curling powerhouse.

On championship Sunday, Einarson—who had beaten rival Hasselborg in the semis—held a 7-2 lead over Gim before the Koreans launched a comeback, closing the deficit to 7-6. The Canadians, however, scored three in the 10th for the 10-6 win.

That match, and the Einarson-Hasselborg semifinal, were the only two playoff games that involved two teams that are not splitting up.

The men’s final saw Gushue—who had extracted some revenge on Edin with a 6-5 win in the semifinals—battle old foe Koe. The Albertans had finally defeated Gushue earlier in the tournament (Gushue had owned them in recent months) but the script was flipped in the Slam men’s finale. It was 6-2 after four ends and 8-2 after five, and a Koe three in the sixth meant an 8-5 Gushue win and handshakes.

John Morris now says farewell to four-player men’s curling, in favor of mixed doubles.

(Yes, we know he’s said that before.)

As fans know, the remaining Koe players are splitting three ways—with Hebert joining Bottcher, B.J. Neufeld teaming with Matt Dunstone and Koe going with an (accomplished) youth movement.

Gushue, Mark Nichols and Geoff Walker say goodbye to Brett Gallant, who caps an eight-year run with one of the greatest men’s teams in history.

Three world championships (one title), eight Briers (with eight playoff appearances), 11 Grand Slam titles, tons of cash and even mixed doubles honours for Gushue and Gallant in that time.

What a double quad that was.

And we’ve decided to send the b’ys off to pasture with a replay of our 2017 St. John’s Brier hype video. It was assembled just before that tournament and the result meant so much for the team’s legacy; it really marked the start of everything.

In the end, they earned the hype.