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OAKVILLE, Ont. — Reid Carruthers didn’t hesitate to assign his team a top grade based on their performance last season when asked during the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard on Thursday.

Playing in their first year together, the Winnipeg-based rink of Carruthers, third Braeden Moskowy, second Derek Samagalski, and lead Colin Hodgson cooled the red-hot Team Mike McEwen in the Safeway Championship final this past February to earn the buffalo crests and represent Manitoba at the Tim Hortons Brier.

Team Carruthers competed in four Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling events during 2014-15 and qualified for the playoffs three times. They also won a World Curling Tour title at the Stu Sells Toronto Tankard and finished the season sixth overall in the Canadian Teams Ranking System (CTRS).

For Carruthers, who works as a school teacher by day, it was an easy A for his squad.

“It was an A because it exceeded our expectations going into the season,” Carruthers explained. “I just wanted to have some fun and at the end of the season if we were a Top-10 team I would have been really happy. So by getting to go to the Brier in our first year as a team it was an A to A+ in my books.”

Carruthers reached the top of the curling mountain winning the 2011 Brier and world titles with Jeff Stoughton, but now back skipping his own rink it’s a steady process as they look to continue to climb the CTRS.

“We want to finish in the same spot or better at the end of the season on the CTRS ranking and keep securing some funding money for us to continue to work hard on and off the ice,” Carruthers said. “For us, basically, it’s just about being consistent, work on some of the things that we did well and then obviously work on some of the things we need to work on.”

Next up for Team Carruthers following the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard is the first Pinty’s GSOC event of the season, the Tour Challenge, in Paradise, N.L. Carruthers said it’s going to be exciting playing in the tournament even though they face home-province hero Brad Gushue of St. John’s in the opening draw Tuesday night.

“Any time you get to play on the arena ice is a great learning experience for your team,” he said. “Getting to play against the best teams and playing for some awesome money and on Sportsnet you can’t really ask for more.”

“Some people like having that role of playing against the hometown (team) and being the spoiler and I think our guys are going to look forward to it,” Carruthers added. “It’s fun that we actually get to play them first game too rather than later in the week. It will be a really neat game to win because it kind of sets up the momentum for the week and we play a top team.”