SUBSCRIBING TO LESS IS MORE THEORY AT BRIER

Team Canada’s Gushue says 16-rink format at national championship is ridiculous

With the new fractured format for the Tim Hortons Brier, will it ever be possible to hold another one in an NHL arena?

The former Brier boss who first took the grand national rock concert into NHL arenas doesn’t think so.

“Frankly, I think going into a large building would be insane,” Warren Hansen said.

“The 16-team format with over half the field non-competitive simply makes it worse.”

Hansen, who now is employed by the Olympic gold medal-winning U.S. program, took the Brier where it had never been before when it was held in Calgary’s Saddledome in 1997, drawing 223,322 customers.

Two years later, it was held in Edmonton and boasted attendance of 242,887. In 2002 it was back in Calgary and established a new record of 245,296. Three years later, in Edmonton, the alltime record was set at 281,985 — to this day the most tickets sold to any curling event anywhere in the world.

Winnipeg 2008 (165,075), Calgary 2009 (246,126), Edmonton 2013 (190,113) and Calgary 2015 (151,836) kept the turnstiles clicking.

Eight Briers in NHL arenas have drawn a combined total of 1,746,640 paid admissions for an average of 218,330. And there’s a state-of-the-art arena with an invented-for-the Brier Ice District in Edmonton. It’s just sitting there ready to help Curling Canada reinvent the Brier as an even more exciting entity. And what happens? Curling Canada reinvents the Brier so it no longer makes sense to play the big top.

As the new 16-team, two-pool, Nunavut-will-play-eight-games Brier gets ready to debut here, the reality is the first five days will almost certainly feature mismatch after mismatch in the name of political correctness.

With tonight’s sudden-death game between Mike McEwen and Jason Gunnlaugson — the top two teams in the rankings who didn’t win their provincials — the addition of a wild-card team does add a quality team.

But that doesn’t change the fact the event is overloaded with pretenders and no longer are four of them playing before the Brier and three slinking off into the night before they turn the TV cameras on.

Unless they decide to play the first five days at a local curling club before moving into the NHL rink for the final four days, who is going to fill 18,000 seats to watch Nunavut and the rest before the event really begins?

“It ends up really feeling like two events,” said Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue, the defending Brier and world champion who will wear the Team Canada uniform here in his 18th Brier.

Gushue seems to understand the balance between Canadiana and curling.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” said Gushue Thursday as he waited his turn to enter the TSN photo and video shoot that precedes every Brier.

“As a fan watching the Scotties, the first couple of days there just didn’t seem to be any real good matchups, any real close games. Then, all of a sudden, on Thursday and Friday when you get into the championship pool, there are four great games out there, one on every sheet and you only get to watch one on TV,” he said.

At the first go-round with this format at the Scotties in Penticton, Nunavut lost 9-2, 7-4, 10-3, 13-4, 11-4, 12-2 and 12-4 to finish 0-7 and advanced to face 0-7 Yukon in the Placement Round where they lost 9-4, leaving them with a 27-83 for-against record and in 16th place.

“There are teams here who have really worked hard for a long time to try get here. For me, in my first couple of Briers, it was exciting to be able to play against the likes of Randy Ferbey, Russ Howard, Jeff Stoughton and all those guys. Now, if you come to the Brier and they are not in your pool, you’re not going to get a chance to play them.”

Saskatchewan gets to play Nunavut, but doesn’t play Alberta.

Gushue says 16 teams is ridiculous.

“The first thing they can do is get rid of Team Canada,” he said of the team he skips. “And get rid of the wild card.”

Hansen said the Brier has to get smaller to be big enough to take into an NHL building again.

“For the near future, big buildings should never again be considered,” he said.

I think going into a large building would be insane. The 16-team format with over half the field non-competitive simply makes it worse.