News General News

ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — Better late than never, Team Canada has finally brushed aside its woes this season and is running red and white hot at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

The Calgary-based team of skip Chelsea Carey, third Amy Nixon, second Jocelyn Peterman and lead Laine Peters scored a victory overseas at the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic in Japan to open the 2016-17 campaign, but that remains their lone title of the year falling into a bit of a slump as the season progressed.

Holding the auto-berth back to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts as the defending national champions gave them a target to focus on and Carey’s crew has found its groove sitting in third place in the round-robin standings with a 7-1 record.

“We haven’t seen the results we wanted to see earlier in the season, but we knew we were coming here, which doesn’t happen for any of the other teams,” Peterman said. “We made some changes that we knew we might not see as many good results as we wanted to earlier in the season with the goal of peaking for this event. Hopefully that’s what is happening.

“Obviously we’re kind of in a points race [for Olympic qualifying] so we would have liked to have done better earlier in the season, but the goal was to peak for this event.”

Carey finished fourth at the world championship last year and Peterman said it’s really cool getting the unique opportunity to wear the Maple Leaf once again.

“It’s a little bit surreal to be representing your country at a national event,” Peterman admitted. “I wouldn’t say necessarily we’ve taken the approach like it is a target on our back, more just a privilege and to just take in every privilege of being here.”

Canada opened its title defence at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts against Ontario, the No. 1 ranked team in the world skipped by Rachel Homan. While Ontario prevailed 7-5 in an extra end during Saturday’s marquee matchup, Canada didn’t lose track.

“I think we’ve been steadily improving each game,” Peterman said. “We came out strong against Homan and we had a good game against them. We’ve just been building since then and feeling comfortable out there.”

Canada rolled off seven consecutive wins although they’ve had to grind it out from time to time to get those dubs. Wednesday was a perfect example of how their tournament has progressed. The two-win stand began with a narrow 6-5 victory over Quebec’s Eve Belisle in the afternoon followed by an 11-5 rout over Stacie Curtis of Newfoundland and Labrador during the evening even with frosty ice making conditions less than ideal.

“The ice was quite a bit trickier in that last game,” Peterman said, “but we felt okay with it and pretty confident in how to manage it.”

Having been down this road before just a year ago has also played a factor in helping them prepare for the long tournament.

“Same as we did last year, we kind of broke the games up into three-game sets with always the goal of winning each three-game set,” Peterman said. “The next three isn’t any different, despite who the teams are, hopefully just come out with a winning record in the three-game set.”

Canada wraps up its final round-robin set taking on Northern Ontario in a rematch of last year’s final, Saskatchewan and Alberta. The latter should be an interesting one as not only will they face off against their home province, for Nixon, Peterman, and Peters it may also be against their former skip.

The three played with Heather Nedohin before the two-time Canadian champ took a step back from competitive curling in 2015. Nedohin is serving as the fifth for Team Alberta and has alternated with skip Shannon Kleibrink, who is battling through a back injury.

Peterman has been anticipating the match even if it may feel a bit weird going up against her home province.

“There’s been a few times when I’ve caught myself looking at the schedule when they play,” Peterman said with a laugh. “It’ll be cool playing against Heather too. The three of us used to play with her. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. It should be fun.”