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8 Ends: McEwen-Carruthers pairing primed for success

Spring has sprung and so too has the latest bloom of explosive curling team announcements.

After the riptide of breakups within the men’s division last week, the monster wave of retooled rosters rolled in for the next Olympic cycle.

Team Epping released the news Monday they will have a new front end reuniting Brent Laing and Craig Savill. Super Tuesday brought upon us the new Team Koe crew with the addition of B.J. Neufeld at third and Colton Flasch at second followed a couple hours later with Mike McEwen joining Team Carruthers to throw fourth stones.

Is it next season yet? September can’t come soon enough except we still have two more Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling tournaments to come before we say “later days” to the 2017-18 campaign.

1st End: Team Carruthers puts the locker room on notice

When two of the top skips in the world pair up, it’s kind of a big deal. Reid Carruthers has added Mike McEwen to his lineup for the next Olympic cycle in the biggest blockbuster free-agent signing this season.

How will they get along, you ask? Quite well, seeing as how they are BFFs plus McEwen is throwing fourth with Carruthers sliding over to third but still calling the game. It’s unorthodox but they’re not the first to go with that setup (Randy Ferbey did OK for himself skipping at third to win four Briers) and should present the best of both worlds. As we saw this past weekend during the Princess Auto Elite 10, you want McEwen throwing that last brick.

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Carruthers and McEwen have set themselves up for the best opportunity to challenge for Canada’s Olympic spot in four years and that’s the ultimate goal here. Yes, Beijing 2022 is 1,400-something days away, but the planning process has already begun and it was a massive shakeup a quadrennial ago — Team Koe — that led to that Olympic team forming.

Speaking of Koe …

2nd End: Kevin Koe retools roster with sharpshooters

It wasn’t going to be easy replacing third Marc Kennedy and second Brent Laing, yet Kevin Koe somehow found a way. With Kennedy taking a break and Laing going to Team Epping, Team Koe has gotten younger and fiercer with the new middle section of the lineup bringing in Neufeld from Team McEwen and Flasch, who previously played second for Steve Laycock and skipped his own squad last season.

Both Flasch and Neufeld have proven they can bring the heat. Again, we saw Neufeld blast through the Princess Auto Elite 10 and drop a gem on Team Gushue in the final with a stunning 98 percent shooting percentage. They’ll be an interesting and entertaining team to watch, that’s for sure.

Let’s not forget lead Ben Hebert will be back as the ace of the tick shot for the last 10, 13, 15 years.

3rd End: Epping adds valuable experience

Kevin Koe went younger but John Epping went the opposite direction opting to load up with the experienced duo of Laing (formerly of Team Koe) and Savill (last as the alternate for Team Carruthers).

Laing and Savill were a perfect pair together manning the front-end for John Morris and then Glenn Howard. The two won a dozen Grand Slams together and had the Ontario Tankard on lockdown while with Team Howard before Laing headed west to join Koe in 2014.

Epping has had his moments at the top winning three Grand Slam titles himself, but this could be the addition that ensures his team stays at the top of the mountain.

4th End: Team Jacobs quashes the rumours

Although Team Jacobs got ahead of the curve and said prior to the Olympic Trials in December they were committing to another four years, there was a lot of chatter heading into the Princess Auto Elite 10 about them possibly breaking up after all. The Jacobs crew held a team meeting Thursday afternoon in their hotel room and sorted things out to stand by the decision to stick it out for another quadrennial.

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Really though, can you picture them playing with anyone else? The 2014 Olympic champs are a family both literally and figuratively with brothers E.J. and Ryan Harnden and their cousin Brad Jacobs plus Ryan Fry has been welcomed like one of their own since joining the team.

Meanwhile, Edmonton’s Team Bottcher announced they’ll be staying together as well. This move makes sense too given the bond between Brendan Bottcher, Brad Thiessen and Karrick Martin over the years dating back to their University of Alberta days and they’ve been trending upwards since adding Darren Moulding at third some 15 months ago by winning back-to-back Alberta Boston Pizza Cup titles and taking silver at the Brier this year.

5th End: Team McEwen going out in style

Funny how it worked out the first stop on Team McEwen’s farewell tour was on home ice at St. James Civic Centre for the Princess Auto Elite 10.

Team McEwen was simply scorching, put on a curling clinic every game to entertain the crowd and finished with an unblemished 6-0 record including a dominant 4-1 victory (3 & 1 in match play terms) Sunday over back-to-back Brier champions Team Gushue.

McEwen had the option of starting the final with the hammer or choosing rock colour. Often teams will want to begin with the hammer and set the tone but McEwen opted to go off-brand and picked his set of rocks.

It’s a decision that could have blown up in McEwen’s face had Gushue been able to convert with the hammer but it worked out in the end. McEwen poured on the pressure early and sat a trio of counters in the first and all Gushue could do was toss a Hail Mary and hope for the best. That didn’t work out and McEwen sat one for a steal.

McEwen said in his post-game interview given the match play rules, he believed it was more important to have a set of rocks he’s comfortable with over the course of the game than to start with the hammer. Given the decisive finish, jumping out to a 3-up lead by halftime and never looking back, it’s hard to argue against that logic.

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6th End: Gushue can’t solve McEwen

After Team Gushue won their first Brier last year in their hometown of St. John’s, N.L., they had little time to prep for the Princess Auto Elite 10 and it showed as they stumbled out to a slow start and missed the playoffs at a Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling tournament for the first time in two-and-a-half years.

It was kind of a different story this time after they successfully defended the Brier last Sunday in Regina and made the quick flight straight to Winnipeg. Gushue fell in the opener to Glenn Howard and needed a shootout to score two crucial points over Niklas Edin.

The team finally regained their Brier form on Day 2 with three-point victories over John Epping and Reid Carruthers to qualify for the playoffs. Things continued to heat up with a quarterfinal win over Epping and defeating Kevin Koe in the semifinals after avoiding a meltdown in the final frame.

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Team Gushue just didn’t have the answer for Team McEwen on Sunday though as they were in chase mode the whole game. The Gushue group threw 74 percent, with the skip at 56 percent, while Team McEwen finished at 90 percent.

It’s a frustrating loss for Team Gushue but as we saw last year it’s nothing to sweat about given they were able to bounce back and capture the world championship. They’ll look to repeat now as they head to Las Vegas to represent Canada once again.

7th End: Sickest shots of the week

It had to be a first in the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling where two rocks tied on a measurement both with the stick and the laser. That happened Friday night between Gushue and Carruthers in the second end after Gushue made an unbelievable draw to cosy up next to Carruthers’s rock.

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Both teams came out happy with the decision though as Gushue avoided giving up a steal and Carruthers claimed the hammer for the following end since it was a push.

We also have to give a shout-out to Team Gushue third Mark Nichols. Gushue drew up a triple raise double takeout for Nichols during the seventh end of the final, waving his brush around like a magic wand. Nichols said, “that easy, eh?” and despite his doubts, excellently executed the manoeuvre to sit two.

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8th End: Up next

The Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling season continues with the Players’ Championship running April 10-15 at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto. Twelve of the top men’s teams and 12 of the top women’s teams on the season will compete in the 26th running of the crown jewel tournament at iconic Maple Leaf Gardens.

Full-event and weekend passes plus single-draw tickets are now available. Click here to purchase your tickets today. Can’t make it to Toronto? Watch on Sportsnet and CBC (click here for the TV schedule) or subscribe to our online streaming options at Sportsnet NOW (Canada) or Yare TV (international).