Einarson on fire going into final

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This article was published 21/02/2020 (1672 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MOOSE JAW, Sask. — Kerri Einarson was feeling it. There’s no question. It all seemed to come together: the hot hand, the cool eye, the whole team of sharpshooters behind her. She knew she’d have to be great to get past her provincial rival and clinch a spot in the 2020 Scotties Tournament of Hearts final, and she was.

So when she was done shooting out the lights at Mosaic Place in the Scotties top Page playoff game, Einarson and her Manitoba champion rink of Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Brianne Meilleur had surged 6-4 over provincial rival Jennifer Jones and her Wild Card team.

All four Manitobans were great, but none more than Einarson, who lit up the sheet with a 94 per cent shooting rate.

“I’ve been feeling really comfortable out there, and just feeling the flow, and smelling the ice,” Einarson said, of how she locked in. “When you step out onto the ice you just get this feeling, and it feels really good… I’m just in the zone, not thinking about anything else but making those shots.”

Now, Einarson is just one win away from her first maple leaf jacket, while Jones, on the hunt for what would be her record-setting seventh Canadian title, will have to reload and try again to move forward, now via today’s semifinal. Jones, who has won Canada going the long way ’round before, wasn’t too rattled by the loss.

“They played great,” Jones said. “We unfortunately just couldn’t get our rocks in the right spots. We’d just give them an out, and she made them perfectly every time. But I always say it’s great to play in a semi, if you’re going to win it, so hopefully we’ll go out and win it tomorrow.”

What a time for Einarson to put on a show. These two teams had met so many times, in so many big games; for years, Jones won all and then most of them. It was just two years ago that they’d met in the 2018 Scotties 1-vs.-2 game, with the jackets reversed: Jones won that one, and then won their rematch in the final.

This time, there was no getting past Einarson. It was totally unlike their championship round meeting just one day earlier, where Jones pounced early and put Einarson away 12-7 after only eight ends. This time, after a tense and imperfect opening half, Einarson’s team went up in a fire that Jones could not douse.

Big hits? There were plenty. In the fifth, as Jones worked on setting up a big end, Einarson threw a pair of laser-beam kills to force her to a single, including a fearless triple takeout to lie two. In the ninth, with Einarson leading 5-3 and Jones desperate to make something happen, Sweeting hurled a missile that blasted out both Jones reds. After being stuck at loggerheads for the first five ends, Manitoba finally broke the score open in the sixth, with the game’s first deuce. They snagged another in the eighth, as Einarson sent a surgical hit papering past a guard to remove Jones’ shot rock and score two.

“She was so hot today, and she made some really huge shots,” Birchard said. “The whole team, actually, played great… Brianne played awesome. I can’t even think of a shot she missed, her rocks found the four-foot every single time, and Val and Kerri made some beauty doubles, triples and whatnot.

“It was awesome to see. I don’t know how many times I said, ‘great shot Kerri,’ because she just made everything.”

Wild Card could never generate the same momentum. As a team, they did well: they shot 84 per cent, with Jones herself finishing at 81. Vice Kaitlyn Lawes had some highlight-reel moments, especially early on. But if they were going to beat Einarson this time, they would have had to be brilliant, and they weren’t.

They’re still in the hunt. All they have to do now is beat Homan. No biggie.

By the way, it’s an interesting place for Birchard to be. The first time she came to a Scotties was in 2018, throwing third rocks for Team Jones in the place of Olympic-bound Lawes. Back then, she said, every single moment felt like a dream, so she just soaked it in and savoured the experience.

Now, in the second year with this supergroup of four longtime skips, Birchard is looking to take care of business.

“We’ve just put in so much hard work as a foursome, so it just means a little bit more for us to work our way through this week,” she said. “It’s one of the toughest fields I’ve seen in a long time at the Scotties, and the girls are playing great and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

Homan kept her dream of a fourth Canadian championship alive on Saturday, when she beat Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville in the 3-vs.-4 Page game. It was an afternoon thriller, and far tighter than the final score of 9-5 suggests: the game was tense and studded with high-pressure shotmaking.

McCarville, a teacher who plays little during the season but skips one of the most well-oiled machines in the game, will now look ahead to the 2021 Scotties in her hometown of Thunder Bay. Could we see her rink playing more on the circuit, in the hopes of clinching their first Canadian title at home?

Homan all-star skip

Ontario and Manitoba players dominated the Scotties all-star selections this year, under a revamped system that adds a little more depth and meaning to the honour.

After years of selecting national all-stars based only on shooting percentage for their position, Curling Canada this year moved to a combined process based on votes from championship round teams and media members together with the shotmaking statistics.

Named to the first team were Homan, Sweeting, Birchard and Ontario lead Lisa Weagle. The second-team all-stars, which were announced during the 3-vs.-4 Page, included Einarson, Ontario third Emma Miskew and second Joanne Courtney, and Team Canada lead Rachel Brown.

Brown was also bestowed with the Marj Mitchell Sportsmanship Award, an annual kudos chosen by player votes. It was named after the beloved Saskatchewan skip who in 1980 won the second-ever women’s world championship.

TSN extends broadcast deal

Looks like TSN is happy to keep sweeping ahead with this sport for the foreseeable future.

On Saturday, Curling Canada and TSN announced they’d extended their long-standing broadcast deal, adding an eight-year extension that will start later this year and run to the end of the 2027-28 season. The deal includes the rights to broadcast the Brier and Scotties, as well as other Curling Canada-managed events.

Among them are the Home Hardware Canada Cup, the Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings Olympic trial, the Road to the Roar Pre-Trials, the OK Tire & BKT Tires Continental Cup, as well as the world men’s and women’s championships.

TSN started broadcasting curling in 1984, and has held exclusive rights to Curling Canada events since 2006.

 

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca