Gushue continues his Grand quest
St. John's rink 2-1 at Masters GSOC event; final preliminary games are today
Brad Gushue and his St. John’s rink made another big step in their quest to get back to their Grand Slam-winning ways Thursday in North Bay, Ont., site of the Masters, the first Grand Slam of Curling event of the 2019-20 season.
Gushue, Mark Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker improved to 2-1 with an 8-3 victory over the Winnipeg rink skipped by Mike Mcewen.
The Gushue rink has won 10 GSOC events overall, more than any other men’s team, but hasn’t had a first-place finish in a Slam in more than year — that was the Elite 10 (since dropped from the GSOC roster of events), back in September of 2018.
After that, Gushue and Co. made it to the playoffs of the remaining Slam events in 2018-19 — getting to the quarter-finals five times and the semifinal once — but they haven’t played in a final since. In fact, they haven’t won in any competition since last September.
But after losing 5-4 to Regina’s Matt Dunstone in their Masters opener, Gushue and his teammates have posted a couple of impressive results, including a 6-2 win over Niklas Edin of Sweden Wednesday night in a game that saw the St. John’s rink steal single points in the final four ends.
Gushue finishes his preliminary schedule this evening against Brendan Bottcher of Edmonton.
The Gushue rink is among 15 competing at the Masters. The teams are split into three pools of five for round-robin play, with the top eight overall qualifying for the playoffs.
It’s the same set-up for a corresponding women’s division.
Quarter-finals and semifinals are scheduled for Saturday, with championship finals set for Sunday.