Rock derails Gushue’s reign

BRANDON, MAN.— The way the reign ended stung Brad Gushue more than losing the crown.

His team’s bid to win a third straight Canadian men’s curling championship was derailed by a tiny rock that not only denied Gushue an early lead, but loosened his control of the game.

Instead of scoring two with hammer, and perhaps three with the right roll, Brendan Bottcher stole a point when Gushue’s final stone of the second end caught on debris.

Giving up four in the eighth end of a 7-2 loss to Bottcher in Saturday’s playoff game was a dagger to Gushue’s three-peat.

But the early thwarted stone put Gushue in a position where he felt he had to force the issue in eight with the score at 2-2.

It went badly for the defending champions.

In the other playoff game Saturday, Alberta’s Kevin Koe advanced to the final with a 9-4 win over Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs.

So Jacobs will play Bottcher’s wild-card team from Edmonton in Sunday afternoon’s semifinal to gain a rematch with Koe at night for the title.

“The pick was the story of the game,” Gushue said. “Getting two in the second end, you can really dictate the play and control the game.

“Really disappointing. Probably one of the top three or four worst breaks I’ve had in my career. It happens. I’ve had it happen to us and happen against us. It’s kind of disappointing the run ended on those terms.”

Bottcher, Darren Moulding and front end Brad Thiessen and Karrick Martin represented Alberta when they lost 6-4 to Gushue in the Brier final last year in Regina.

With Koe eliminating Bottcher in the provincial semifinal this year, the rink had to beat Toronto’s John Epping in the sudden-death, wild-card game the night before the main draw to gain entry again.

Bottcher climbed out of a fivepoint hole to defeat host Manitoba 9-8 in an extra end earlier in the tournament. No team had overcome a larger deficit at the Brier.

Quadruple points in Saturday’s eighth end was the highest single-end score in a Page three-four game since the format was introduced in 1993.

“We’ve done a few wild-cardish things this week like coming back from a five-nothing deficit and winning that wildcard game,” Moulding said. “We seem to have a few tricks up our sleeve.”

After his stone in the second end went sideways, Gushue dug the offending pebble out of the ice with his fingernail.

“It was a big rock. It was sharp,” he said. “When it went over it, I could see some snow flying from behind it.

“It’s just a freak thing and it sucks. Really, after that happened, you could see Bottcher’s team spirit really get higher. They played incredible after that. They outplayed us in the eighth end.”

Bottcher acknowledged the pick was “crappy timing, but I’ll take it for sure.”

With hammer in the eighth, Moulding made two tough peels and Bottcher another to both keep the button clear and lay three. Gushue’s defensive freeze hung out in the open for Bottcher to tap for four.

“You’re running out of ends and at some point one team feels they’re behind and they’ve got to push,” Bottcher said. “He was pushing hard for a force or a steal and we got a couple halfshots out of him at the end and that was really the game.”