DRUBBINGS FEED GUSHUE’S BRIER FORMAT HATRED
Brad Gushue says he’d love to report otherwise, that the Brier is still the Brier and that all turned out to be swell.
But as the end of pool play in the new 16-team format arrived here Wednesday evening, it was time for the pretenders to exit stage left and the contenders not to pretend Curling Canada got it right with the fractured format the membership manufactured in the name of political correctness.
“The more I play it, the more I hate it,” said Gushue, the defending Brier and world champion wearing the Team Canada uniform. “I don’t like it at all. It’s a terrible format.
“I’m not going to mince words. I said it right from the get-go coming in here. As a fan watching the Scotties, I thought it was terrible. Playing in it was just as bad.
“We’re all talking in the lockerroom now. We haven’t seen Reid Carruthers or Brad Jacobs all week. We have no idea how they are playing or performing.
“There’s a better solution than this. I’d love to see it go back to the old format. I said it before. I’m not a fan of Team Canada and I’m not a fan of the wild card.”
Gushue made strong statements at the start of the week and wasn’t shy about saying “I told you so” Wednesday.
The fractured format was put in play this year by the membership of Curling Canada to end three years of a ridiculous relegation format in which four minnows held a mini tournament for two days before the Brier (with three headed home humiliated). The old format was worse — but not by much, Team Wild Card skip Mike McEwen said.
McEwen realized he was biting the hand that fed him, so he tried to put it as politely as possible as pool play wrapped up.
“This is going to sound bad, but it kind of feels like we’ve gone from having a relegation before the Brier starts to having a relegation, on an even bigger scale, in the first half of the Brier.”
Except the relegated teams are not immediately sent out of sight and out of mind.
While the top teams skipped by McEwen, Gushue, John Epping, Reid Carruthers, Brad Jacobs, Brendan Bottcher and Steven Laycock say goodbye to Nunavut, Yukon, Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, British Columbia and Quebec, they’re not gone yet.
They get the day off Thursday and come back Friday to decide 9th-10th, 11th-12th, 13th-14th and 15-16th. Step right up. Get your tickets now.
It’s interesting that the comments came from McEwen. This is a skip who lost six Manitoba finals before he made it to his first Brier two years ago. He was runner-up to Kevin Koe in the Roar of the Rings Olympic trials. And he was felled by chickenpox and spent most of this year’s Manitoba final in hospital while Carruthers cruised to his first Brier.
It was McEwen, hearing Curling Canada was headed to a 16-team Brier, who proposed a wild-card game to decide the 16th team.
Earlier in the week, he said even though he’s here as the wild card, he really doesn’t believe in it.
With the round robin done, Gushue couldn’t have been more outspoken that the format is a farce to make way for an entry such as Nunavut, where they have the grand total of two curling clubs and six sheets of ice.
“My opinion hasn’t changed. There are just too many lopsided games,” he said.
“Like I said to you at the start of it, it’ll be like the Scotties with this format and then not really get interesting until Thursday or Friday. Then there will be three or four games you want to watch on each sheet and you can only watch one on TV.
“I’m sure when we get there, there are a lot of fans who are going to feel the same way. There are going to be people wondering why they couldn’t have watched all those games throughout the week,” he said.
Lopsided games?
In the first dozen draws alone, these were some of the scores: 9-3, 12-7, 10-2, 9-2, 8-3, 9-3, 12-5, 9-4, 14-3, 9-2, 8-2, 8-3, 10-5, 12-6, 10-3, 11-4, 10-3 ... And that was before the final Pool B draw where Prince Edward Island’s Eddie “Spuds” MacKenzie finally got to put the boots to somebody. P.E.I. 14, Nunavut 2.
Those were just the games where Velcro was ripped, handshakes exchanged and an “X” put up on the scoreboard after incomplete ends.
That’s the stat that probably said it best. In the first 12 of the 14 draws of pool play, 36 of 48 games failed to finish a 10th end and most were over after the eight-end minimum. In five complete draws, all four games failed to make it to the 10th.
That said, many of the pretenders turned out to be terrific stories and were embraced. It will be sad to see them go.
But the bottom line has been: If you didn’t watch the actual curling, this new format Brier has been terrific so far.