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Mike McEwen wasn’t too pleased at the start of Wednesday’s action, but the Manitoba skip was all smiles in the end.

A two-win Wednesday has kept McEwen atop of the leaderboard at the Tim Hortons Brier in St. John’s, N.L., with his Team Manitoba squad climbing to a 7-1 record.

McEwen rallied late to pick up an emotional 6-5 victory over Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs and followed that up with a 9-3 win against Nova Scotia’s Jamie Murphy.

The dub over Jacobs had McEwen, third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld jumping for joy as their skip bounced back from a shaky start to deliver the last rock of the game right to the tee line to score two points for the win.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then photographer Anil Mungal just saved us a lot of writing.

It was all McEwen in the late stages of his game against Murphy as he broke a 3-3 tie with a deuce in seven and added a steal of one in eight and three in nine to roll out.

“I know personally I’ve been starting to crack a little bit,” McEwen admitted during his press conference at the end of the night. “I haven’t been the nicest skip out there. There’s a ton of pressure and we’ve been playing from behind in quite a few situations recently. Even I’m feeling it and it was nice to play in the lead again in a game.”

McEwen remains in front of the pack, but not by much with Canada’s Kevin Koe (6-2) right on his tail and on deck as they face off Thursday afternoon. Manitoba also meets four-time Brier champ Glenn Howard of Ontario (3-5) in the evening and wraps up round-robin play against Quebec’s Jean-Michel Menard (5-3) on Friday.

“We’ve got a pretty meaty schedule coming up,” McEwen said. “Three really good teams, two with greats records, one not so much but can beat anybody on any given day, Team Ontario. This is important for us to feel like we’ve got a lot in the tank coming tomorrow when we play Team Canada first.”

Hometown hero Brad Gushue and his Newfoundland and Labrador team are tied with Koe for second place at 6-2 with Jacobs just behind sporting a 6-3 record.

Gushue cools red-hot Menard

It’s been almost two months since Menard won his provincial championship, so perhaps it was just a little bit of rust showing as he opened the Brier with a 0-2 record. The 2006 Brier champ turned back the clock though and rolled off a five-game winning streak entering Wednesday night’s contest against Gushue.

Menard started with the hammer and controlled the first few ends until a costly clip on a guard with his first skip stone in the fourth end opened the door for Gushue to set up and score three to build a 4-2 lead. The teams exchanged singles in five and seven as Gushue kept pace to retain the two-point advantage. Menard came up short with his last in the ninth, giving up a couple, and that was ball game as he shook hands. Gushue remained sharp curling 92 percent in the 7-3 victory while Menard slipped to a disappointing team-low 65 percent.

Gushue went 2-0 on the day edging John Morris of B.C. 5-4 in an extra end during the afternoon draw.

“Hopefully we can have another day like we had today,” Gushue said in his post-game press conference. “We came back after an emotional, I guess, intense game last night [against Jacobs] and I thought we had a great day.”

“For sure it was by far our best day,” he added. “I really felt the last three games it’s like the team that I’ve known for the last couple years. We were doing all of the right processes and thinking the right way and it paid dividends.”

Next on the agenda for Gushue is Howard on Thursday afternoon followed by a rematch of last year’s final against the defending champ Koe in the evening. Gushue completes his round-robin schedule Friday morning versus Murphy.

Kevin clips Jamie in the Battle of the Koes

Wednesday night saw the latest chapter in the clash of the Koe Bros. between Kevin and Jamie, who skips the Northwest Territories team.

Kevin improved to a 7-0 all-time record against his younger brother at the Brier with an 8-6 victory.

Things got dicey down the stretch with NWT scoring a deuce in eight and stealing one in nine to close within one. Jamie didn’t have the hammer in the final frame, but made things intense with a pair of counters split across the house. Kevin opted for a hit rather than draw on the final rock of the game and it worked as his shooter stuck around to secure the win.

Their father Fred Koe, who was celebrating his birthday, was in the house waving both Canada and NWT flags.

Still in it to win it … for now

Menard stays in the playoff chase along with Morris and Saskatchewan’s Adam Casey (both at 5-4) although they’ll have to win out from here to even have a chance at qualifying. Only the top four teams advance and three losses was the cut-off point at last year’s Brier if you’re looking for a benchmark.

Casey kicks things off Thursday’s morning against Jacobs in a key matchup for both teams while Morris meets Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher (3-6). Making things intriguing for Casey and Morris is they play each other in their final round-robin game, however, fate may be beyond their control at that point if the teams ahead of them stay in charge.