Eight Ends: Memorable moments of the 2015-16 GSOC season
The 2015-16 season was the longest in Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling history with an expanded seven-event schedule. Plus the men’s final of the Humpty’s Champions Cup went into double extra ends, thus extending the year even more.
Stretching from coast-to-coast across Canada were a plethora of curling highlights, let’s run down all seven events and the memorable moments from each:
1st End: Tour Challenge, Sept. 8-13, Paradise, N.L.
The expanded Pinty’s GSOC season started with the biggest event of them all. The inaugural Tour Challenge featured two tiers of men’s and women’s action with a total of 60 teams hitting the ice.
The Tier 2 division, featuring teams ranked outside of the top 15, included a bonus where the winners would earn spots in the Masters and compete against the elite. Jim Cotter’s team hadn’t played as much the previous season and winning the Tier 2 title earned them their way back into the mix. Kerri Einarson captured the women’s Tier 2 title, her team’s first championship together, kick-starting their breakout season.
Brad Gushue was the clear crowd favourite with his local fans packing the stands as Newfoundland flags waved every draw. Gushue reached the final, but in the extra end it was Kevin Koe who held the hammer and the Calgary skip secured the 4-3 victory for his first Pinty’s GSOC title with Marc Kennedy, Brent Laing, and Ben Hebert. It was the first major checkmark for Team Koe on a season that also saw them win the Canada Cup, the Tim Hortons Brier, and the world championship.
The women’s final between Ottawa’s Rachel Homan and Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland was dubbed the “fog bowl” with wacky weather conditions making things interesting. Homan held the hammer coming home up by a point but her final shot through the fog missed and Tirinzoni, sitting two counters, stole the victory and her first career Pinty’s GSOC title.
2nd End: Masters, Oct. 27 – Nov. 1, Truro, N.S.
It was redemption for Homan as she posted a perfect 7-0 record to capture her third career Masters title in four years. Homan defeated then defending champion Val Sweeting of Edmonton 6-4 in the final.
The system worked with Tour Challenge Tier 2 winner Einarson proving she belonged among the elite. Einarson reached the semifinals topping Tier 1 champ Tirinzoni no less in the quarterfinals. Meanwhile, Cotter made it all the way to the men’s final, but it was Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen and his team who captured their sixth Pinty’s GSOC title together with a 5-3 win.
It was a shocking moment during the men’s quarterfinals when Gushue lost his footing and fell face-first onto the ice. Gushue was rushed to a nearby hospital as his team continued a man short. Then like something out of WWE, Gushue came back, with his medical bracelet still attached to his wrist, and returned to the match.
3rd End: National, Nov. 11-15, Oshawa, Ont.
Gushue said he felt good enough to be at the National just a couple weeks after his fall at the Masters. As it turned out, he was also good enough to win the event. Gushue took home the National title defeating Winnipeg’s Reid Carruthers 7-2 in the final. The championship could have gone either way with Carruthers, playing in his first GSOC final as a skip, making a couple big-time shots that unfortunately for him resulted in steals.
Homan continued her reign on top of the division winning the inaugural National women’s title although there was a bit of controversy late in the final.
Tracy Fleury of Sudbury, Ont. — who like Carruthers was also playing in her first GSOC final — wished to measure rocks in the seventh end as Team Homan was kicking them off of the ice. Homan’s rink felt they had only given up a steal of one — to trail 4-3 with hammer coming home — and opted for a draw that came up short, but Fleury’s rink wanted to make sure it was only one. The rules state Fleury could have added another point on the board as the non-offending team, but opted to just take the one. Homan scored a deuce in the eighth to win 5-4.
4th End: Meridian Canadian Open, Dec. 8-13, Yorkton, Sask.
Toronto’s John Epping was literally perfect in winning his second Pinty’s GSOC title as a skip and his first with Mat Camm, Patrick Janssen, and Tim March. Epping threw 100 percent in the final making every shot, including a few incredible angle raises, against Gushue to win 7-4.
Epping needed a Hail Mary throw to even make it into the final with this shot to beat Koe during the semifinals.
Homan won her record third consecutive women’s Pinty’s GSOC major scoring two in the final end to edge Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones 8-7. The victory also tied Homan with Jones for the most women’s Pinty’s GSOC majors won as a skip at five.
5th End: Elite 10, March 17-20, Victoria
Team Homan had won three Pinty’s GSOC titles and had only lost two games in the series, why not take on a new challenge against the men at the Elite 10? Homan made history becoming the first women’s team to play in a men’s GSOC invitational since Sportsnet acquired the series in 2012.
Homan further re-wrote the record books defeating Calgary’s Charley Thomas, thus also becoming the first women’s team to beat a high-ranked men’s team in a Pinty’s GSOC event in the Sportsnet era.
The first Elite 10 event a year ago saw every game finish within regulation. Perhaps it was karma then that saw both semifinals and the final require extra ends.
Due to the nature of the Elite 10 format, where teams win ends by scoring two or more points or stealing at least one, a draw-to-the-button shootout is used to determine the winner. Gushue squeaked past Steve Laycock in the semis by half-an-inch while Carruthers edged Koe to setup a rematch of the National final.
Gushue again came out on top in the sequel to win his second Pinty’s GSOC title of the season.
6th End: Players’ Championship, April 12-17, Toronto
The crown jewel of the Pinty’s GSOC series returned to Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre for the third time in four years (and will be back in 2017).
All three Toronto tournaments have seen the same team come out on top on the women’s side. Eve Muirhead of Scotland defeated Jones 9-6 in the final this time around. It’s only a matter of time before they rename the building the Muirhead Athletic Centre.
Team Homan just needed a pair of victories to clinch the Rogers Grand Slam Cup and won their first two games to take the bonus points championship and the $75,000 bonus. Their quest to sweep the four majors fell short as they lost to Einarson during the quarterfinals. Homan led 6-2 after three ends and Einarson rebounded with a point in five, back-to-back single steals in six and seven, and a steal of two in eight completed the comeback.
Gushue also captured the Rogers Grand Slam Cup prior to the final, but it was the Players’ Championship that had been the elusive major with two runner-up finishes in his career. He had even joked with final opponent Brad Jacobs that he’d give him the bonus to win, however, the Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., team needed the victory in order to get into the Humpty’s Champions Cup.
Gushue didn’t need to break the bank in the end snapping a 3-3 tie with a deuce in six and holding Jacobs to a single in seven when the final shot came up short. The eighth end was more of a victory lap for Gushue as he claimed the Players’ Championship to complete a career Grand Slam (winning all four majors) and joining an exclusive list of skips including Kevin Martin, Glenn Howard, Wayne Middaugh, and Jeff Stoughton.
It was also Team Gushue’s second consecutive tournament running the table as they held a 14-game winning streak heading into the final event of the season.
7th End: Humpty’s Champions Cup, April 26 – May 1, Sherwood Park, Alta.
Finishing off the season was the second of two new events. Teams had to win a high-profile event over the course of the year in order to qualify for the Humpty’s Champions Cup, which saw some familiar faces miss out while others were making their series debut.
Reigning world junior champions Team Mary Fay (sans Mary Fay, who was back home writing International Baccalaureate exams) scored a 5-4 upset victory in their first Pinty’s GSOC game ever stunning the Scotties winners Team Chelsea Carey with steals in the eighth and extra ends. Third Kristin Clarke skipped the Chester, N.S., rink as they now look for a new team member with Fay making the difficult decision to walk away from curling to focus on university.
It was an emotional ending in the quarterfinals with Calgary’s Team Pat Simmons losing to Epping in their final event together. Carter Rycroft and Nolan Thiessen waved to the crowd one last time before stepping back from the game. Simmons will stay on the ice having joined Brendan Bottcher’s team in Edmonton at third for next season.
Perhaps the DEKALB Superspiel event in November was the lucky charm as both Jones and Carruthers won that event to qualify for the Humpty’s Champions Cup and they both walked away with the final championship playing in their third Pinty’s GSOC final of the season.
Jones topped Homan 7-5 to win her record sixth Pinty’s GSOC women’s title.
Meanwhile, Carruthers and Epping extended the season into a rare double OT requiring not one but two extra ends to determine the victor. Carruthers hit and rolled out with his last in the ninth and a measurement determined both teams’ remaining rocks were outside of the house.
Carruthers had a do-over in the 10th and while he had to make a harder shot drawing against three, and it almost looked like it was heavy, his shot stopped just in time for the 4-3 win.
8th End: There’s always next year
The Pinty’s GSOC schedule for 2016-17 is now set and it’ll be late October before you know it.
Here are the dates and locations for next season, once again spanning across Canada.