Bottcher gets second chance thanks to Koe victory
For Brendan Bottcher, it was a new experience.
“Cheering for Kevin Koe was a new feeling for me. But I was the biggest Koe fan here,” Bottcher said.
The Alberta Brier representative for the past two years, Bottcher lost the Boston Pizza Cup semifinal 7-5 to three-time Brier champion Koe Sunday at the Ellerslie Curling Club. As a result he found himself needing Koe to beat Ted Appelman in the final later in the afternoon to keep his own Brier dream alive.
Koe did it with a spectacular come-from-behind win that featured five in the ninth end to put it away. And the win put Bottcher in the Brier play-in game against John Epping of Ontario for the right to play in the full Brier as the wild card team.
He’s welcome, Koe said. “Bottcher will be in that game now and they’ll have a good chance,” he said.
“They’ll probably be favoured in that game and if they win it, I’d expect them to be in the playoffs at the Brier.”
It worked this way. Koe, as the leading Canadian Team Points System skip during the season, was at the top of the list to qualify for the play-in game that was introduced last year.
Second on the list was Brad Jacobs, but the 2013 Edmonton Brier winner and 2014 Olympic champion already qualified as the Northern Ontario champion.
Third on the list was Epping of Ontario, who claimed a play-in spot when Jacobs made it.
Bottcher went into the BP Cup sitting fourth.
By getting in as Alberta champion, Koe sealed the deal for the Epping-Bottcher game.
Most curling fans expected to see Koe and Bottcher meet in the A Event final, A-B Game and the final itself, but their early struggles kept them off the same sheet of ice together until the Sunday morning semifinal.
Bottcher, as B Event winner began the game with hammer. But after a first end blank, Koe stole one in the second end.
“The steal of one in the second end really hurt. That was a shot that I liked and our guys liked all the way down. That kind of set the tone of it.
“Instead of them chasing us on the scoreboard it was the other way around.”
Koe scored one in the fourth and stole another in the fifth for a 3-1 lead at the break where the stats told the story. Team Koe was curling 84 per cent and Team Bottcher 67 per cent.
“I think in this game we just got two behind too early. It’s tough out there to battle back,” he said of the club ice as opposed to the arena ice both teams are used to playing on.
Left with a simple hit and stick for two in the sixth end, Bottcher made the shot to tie it 3-3 and it was game on.
Brad Theissen cleared out all three Koe rocks in the house in the seventh end to get the double defending champions out of jail in what turned out to be a blank end.
But a routine Koe nose hit for three in the eighth end made it 6-3 and the noose was knotted around the necks of Bottcher’s Edmonton Saville Centre team that includes Darren Moulding, Thiessen and Karrick Martin.
It was almost exactly the same shot for Bottcher in the ninth end, except for only two.
He made it. But he went to the 10th and needed to steal to get to an extra end.
Koe had the whole house to work with to draw for one and the win, putting it in the books as a 7-5 victory.
“It wasn’t our best week of the year. But live and learn,” said Bottcher, who won $54,500 in the TSN Skins Game the previous weekend in Banff, beating Koe in a carry-over draw to the button to do it.
Bottcher’s previous two losses were to Edmonton’s Appelman, the No. 4 seed in the event.
“They played great and they were clearly the better team on the ice.”
Bottcher said their whole season didn’t rest on the result of Koe winning the final.
“It’s been a great year for us, regardless. Long term, I think we showed we’re on the right track,” said the 27-year-old skip.