EYES ON THE PRIZE
Carey rink set for playoffs at worlds
What’s in the past is in the past, and Chelsea Carey is happy to leave it there.
So is Anna Sidorova, for that matter.
While the Canadian skip and her teammates suffered their first loss of the women’s world curling championship to Russia when the two teams squared off on Monday morning, the game doesn’t seem to be playing much of a role in either team’s preparation for Saturday’s 3-4 playoff game.
As far as Carey’s concerned, there’s no value in going back and dissecting the ins and outs of that 6-3 defeat.
“Unless you see a weakness from them and they struggled with something, but they didn’t,” Carey said. “They played well so I don’t think there’s anything there. They’re on tour a lot so we see them often. They’re not a team we’re unfamiliar with by any stretch.”
It’s not just the Canadian team — which also includes third Amy Nixon, second Jocelyn Peterman and lead Laine Peters — that’s dismissing the idea that Monday’s game is in any way significant to Saturday’s showdown.
Sidorova and her Russian teammates were practising alongside the Canadians on Friday afternoon at the Credit Union iPlex. The European champions had a bit of a strange week, as they came out on the winning end against powerhouses like Canada, Sweden and Switzerland, but lost to the U.S. and also dropped lopsided games to Scotland and Japan.
“I’m probably the person who believes that every new game is a new game,” Sidorova said. “Of course you can look back, but it doesn’t mean anything. That’s why we’re looking forward to playing our best and if we play our best I think we’ve got a really good chance to win.”
Monday’s game also came at a particularly rough moment of the week for the Canadians. The night before, they’d been involved in an emotionally challenging game against the U.S. in which the hog line censor on one of Nixon’s rocks went off repeatedly despite there being no violation.
The Canadians would wind up handily beating the U.S., but they were visibly rattled afterwards. Carey had trouble sleeping that night and struggled during the early morning draw against Russia.
Even then, the game largely came down to one shot, despite the 6-3 score line. After mostly going shot-for-shot throughout the first six ends, Carey missed with her final rock of the seventh and allowed Sidorova to draw for two. The rest was essentially a formality.
“It wasn’t that bad a game,” Carey said. “I missed one shot. It’s not like we played bad, we didn’t. We lost a battle and that happens. They’re a good team, we know it’s gonna be a battle and we came out on the wrong end of that one and we’re hopefully going to come out on the right of this one.”
The teams have seen each other before on the World Curling Tour, as well, with Carey’s foursome getting the better of the Russians when they met at the GSOC Tour Challenge Tier I in September.
Of course, the stakes at an early season WCT event are significantly different from those facing the two teams when they step onto the ice on Saturday (2 p.m. MT), but it’s unlikely the pressure will have much of an effect on either rink.
If anything, the situation facing Canada Thursday was more pressure-packed than anything they’ll be dealing with over the weekend.
After dropping a lopsided game 11-2 to Japan, the Canadians were faced with a win-or-go-home game against Scotland. Had they lost, they would have been the first Canadian team to miss the playoffs at a world women’s curling championship since 1999.
Instead, they played arguably their best game of the week against the 2013 champions, winning 9-4 to book a date with Russia.
“It was a lot yesterday, it was a bit of a roller-coaster,” Carey said “It’s nice to just have a relaxing day today with a little bit of practice. We’ll have a nice dinner and go to bed early.” Throughout the round robin, Sidorova insisted that her team wasn’t thinking about where they’d finished at the end of the week. It was, supposedly, all about taking things one game at a time.
With the playoffs set to kick off Friday evening, however, Sidorova was a little more forthcoming about her team’s goals.
“We’re a team which comes to every event and just wants to win it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter which event we’re playing. For sure, when we came here we wanted and expected and still expect to win.”
The playoffs are familiar territory for the Russians, who have brought home bronze at two world championships in a row. That’s not good enough for them this year, though, especially after they outplayed the field at the European championships and won gold.
That experience may have helped them prepare for what lies ahead this weekend.
“(The European championship) is a great event, and yes we are European champions but here, we’re not nothing but we haven’t reached anything except top-four and still don’t have a medal,” Sidorova said. “We still have to battle and fight for every shot, every score on the scoreboard, every point. I think we are ready to do this.”