Northern Ontario, N.W.T. knock off heavyweights
Northern Ontario’s Trevor Bonot summed up Monday’s unexpected outcomes at the Canadian men’s curling championship in a few succinct sentences.
“It’s curling. Honestly, you don’t expect anything. You can hope for it,” the team’s skip said.
“Things happen. It’s honestly one of the reasons why we play it. It’s played on ice. It’s a slippery game.”
Bonot’s team, ranked 60th in Canada, stole a point in the 10th end in a 6-5 win over No. 1 Brendan Bottcher of Alberta. Bottcher, who had executed all of his draws perfectly to that point, stopped well short of the rings against a Northern Ontario counter with his last delivery.
“I was just a little bit light,” he said. “I liked how I slid and I just didn’t have quite the release I needed.”
Bonot and Bottcher were tied at 3-1 in Pool A. Manitoba’s Reid Carruthers, 3-0, had Monday off.
Jamie Koe of the Northwest Territories provided another upset in the morning, beating defending champion Brad Gushue 7-5.
Koe, who has skipped a Territories team to the playoffs once in 16 previous Brier appearances, improved to 3-1 and dropped Gushue to 2-2.
Bonot and his front end of Jordan Potts and Kurtis Byrd are Brier rookies, while third Mike McCarville’s lone appearance was a decade ago.
Their Fort William Curling Club team from Thunder Bay doesn’t travel the curling tour as much as Gushue or Bottcher, which is reflected in Bonot’s low national ranking. But they’ve been stout early in Regina. Their lone loss after four games was in an extra end to Carruthers, who is ranked fifth in Canada and has former Northern Ontario star Brad Jacobs throwing last rocks.
“If you don’t play a lot, you don’t get known,” Bonot said.
“We’ve had Brad in our province for a long time, so you’re knocking at the door trying to get out. We were there all those years trying to win and this year we came through.
“Since we won the province, we’ve just been on the ice every day and really going at it.”
Ontario’s Scott Howard recovered from back-to-back losses with a 7-3 win over Newfoundland and Labrador’s Andrew Symonds, 0-4.