Hometown favourite first to final
Gushue wins Page 1-2 game, B.C. rink misses playoffs at 7-4
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Brad Gushue has played in the national men’s curling championship 13 times and come up short each time.
The St. John’s skip is one win away from finally hoisting the Tim Hortons Brier tankard. And he can do it on home ice to boot.
Gushue guided his Newfoundland and Labrador team to a 7-5 win over Manitoba’s Mike McEwen in the Page playoff 1-2 game on Friday evening. With the victory, he earned a direct berth into the championship game Sunday night.
“I really believe we’re ready,” Gushue said. “Whether we win or not I’m not sure, but it won’t be because we’re not ready.”
The St. John’s skip scored a deuce in the fourth end and added a steal of one in the seventh before McEwen came back with a takeout for two in the eighth.
Gushue peeled a Manitoba stone to score two in the ninth end. He held McEwen to a single in the 10th to the delight of a raucous sellout crowd at Mile One Centre.
“That was our best game all week,” Gushue said. “I thought we controlled it right from the get-go. We didn’t make any mistakes and we had been making a bunch all week. It was a good game with a lot of good shots.”
Canada’s Kevin Koe will take on Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs in the Page playoff 3-4 game this afternoon.
The winner will play McEwen in the evening semifinal for a berth in the championship game.
“I think this was a really good test for us to see how comfortable we are in this environment,” McEwen said. “I’ve never felt better in a big game than I have tonight.”
The playoff matchups weren’t finalized until the completion of the last round-robin draw Friday morning.
McEwen earned the top seed with a 5-2 win over Quebec’s Jean-Michel Menard. McEwen and Gushue topped the standings with 9-2 records.
Gushue, who defeated Nova Scotia’s Jamie Murphy 6-3, was seeded second since he lost to McEwen in round-robin play. Koe beat Mike Kennedy of New Brunswick 7-6 to earn the third seed. Koe and Jacobs finished round-robin play at 8-3, but Jacobs was seeded fourth since he lost their head-to-head meeting.
The morning results knocked Menard and British Columbia’s John Morris (both 7-4) out of the playoff picture and eliminated the need for tiebreakers.
“I think we’ve had a good test leading into (the playoffs) with a few (teams) we’ve played against like Koe and Jacobs, those were playoff atmosphere kind of games,” Gushue said. “The crowd was into it and we were into it.
“So it’s going to be very similar to that, which is good for us because we’ve done it twice.”