Gushue not anxious to dive into pools
Brier will have 16-team, two-division system in 2018, but NL skip says it should be 14 teams, five sheets and ‘have at it’
It’s like the boor who somehow gets an invitation to a house party. He turns out to be a bit cruel. Nobody really likes him, nobody wants him there, but it takes some time to get him out the door.
St. John’s will get to witness the final heave-ho, as the pre-qualifying round — the much-maligned three-year experiment for the Canadian men’s and women’s curling championships — is played, beginning today at Mile One Centre, with one of the four entries advancing to the main draw of the Tim Hortons Brier.
The four are the lowest seeds — Prince Edward Island, the last-place finisher in the 12team Brier main draw in 2016, and Nova Scotia, Nunavut and the Yukon, which failed to advance from last year’s pre-qualifiers.
Beginning next year, Curling Canada will use a 16-team format at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Brier, incorporating
the 10 provinces, three territories, Team Canada, Northern Ontario, and a 16th entry, likely to be chosen through the Canadian Team Ranking System (CTRS).
Mind you, not everyone is a fan of the new plan, which will require the fields to be split into two eight-team pools. That means for the first time in Brier and Tournament of Hearts history, there won’t be full round robins, with everyone playing everyone else in the preliminary draws.
“I’m a true believer that at the national championship, you
should play everybody,” said Newfoundland and Labrador skip Brad Gushue. “So let’s have a 14-team pool.
“Get rid of Team Canada. They say it’s a marketing piece, but they don’t need it. Get rid of the CTRS team, the (planned) 16th team, have five sheets (of ice) instead of four and have at it.”
That would create a round robin where each team would play 13 games, two more than the current system, but Gushue notes that whichever team emerges from the present qualifier will have to play at least 15 games.
He says a full-round robin could be still achieved by adding a day to the schedule.
“All the teams will be here on Thursday, so have them begin play on Friday. We spend all Friday on Hots Shots and practising. You turn those into games,” said Gushue.
“I know Pierre Charette, who is well-respected and pretty well runs the Grand Slams — from the draw side of it — has done up (a plan for) 14 teams and five sheets and it’s not that bad.
“I’d be in favour of that as opposed to the two pools. For one thing, you want to make it as simple as possible for people to follow and not have to spend 20 minutes on the Internet trying to figure it out.”
Gushue knows implementation of his idea isn’t so simple as outlining it.
“They say it would be hard on the icemakers to prep five sheets … there are probably a lot reasons why they’re going this route instead,” he said.
But Gushue says his call for a 14-team full round-robin goes beyond simplifying things for observers or trying to maintain tradition. He’s also concerned about competitive balance.
He said it would take only a couple of upsets — a normally strong province having a down year, a traditionally weaker one making the playoffs — to create the potential for an offkilter situation the following year, when the seeds for the two pools would be established by the standings at the previous Brier.
“All of a sudden, the pools could be completely distorted,” he said. “(Taking) a field like this one, you could have one pool with us, Mcewen (Manitoba), Koe (Team Canada), Jacobs (Northern Ontario) and Morris (British Columbia).
“There could be some pretty heavily-skewed pools. There could be some really good teams that don’t qualify for the championship round that deserve to be in there.”
The two-pool system is already in use at the national junior championships and despite it’s drawbacks, the consensus seems to be that it will be preferable to the present scheme.
“I know there are some that don’t mind, because they’ve probably been through it in juniors, but I’ve never played it,” said Gushue. “I think it’s a little gimmicky. I understand they want everyone to be part of it, but this creates ‘a luck of the draw’ situation and there will be some teams that won’t like it once they’re in what could be a heavy pool.”