News Players' Championship

TORONTO — Brad Gushue kept his incredible winning streak intact in the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling series.

The St. John’s, N.L., skip drew to the button in the eighth end to edge Saskatoon’s Steve Laycock 5-4 Friday night at the Players’ Championship and wrap up the round-robin portion with a perfect 5-0 record. 

Gushue has now won 11 consecutive games after running the table last month to earn his fifth career Pinty’s GSOC title at the Elite 10 in Victoria. However, Gushue is only focused on the next one in the quarterfinals on his quest to capture his first Players’ Championship title — and complete a career Grand Slam — as well as earn the Rogers Grand Slam Cup, awarded to the overall season champion following the conclusion of the event and carrying a $75,000 bonus. 

“Just getting to the playoffs is a big thing,” he said. “Whether you do it at 2-3 or 5-0 is to a certain extent irrelevant. I guess the bonus that we have now is we have hammer every game that we play but the next game is the only one that matters because if we don’t win that then 5-0 doesn’t matter. It’s all about the playoffs here and there’s a lot at stake now with the Rogers Grand Slam Cup and obviously, just this event in and of itself, which is big and means a lot to a lot of guys here.” 

The Elite 10 introduced a new rule where teams were restricted to two sweeping brushes and one skip/vice skip brush in the house for the duration of the event. That rule has been modified for the Players’ Championship as teams are now restricted to a designated left brush, right brush, and skip/vice skip brush with no switching allowed. Gushue admitted he was actually more of a fan of the previous rule used in Victoria.

“It’s a bit of an adjustment but I kind of liked the other one a little bit better,” he said. “We can still manipulate the rocks a fair bit so I kind of prefer the other way where it was a little more onus on the shooter to throw the right weight and throw it at the broom. Here you can still correct bad throws with the sweeping but when the broom heads start to get worn down at the end of the game then you can’t correct it as much. You just have to weather the storm in the first couple ends and then later on in the game you’ll get some misses when people throw some bad rocks. I think we’re getting close though to a solution to this and getting something that we’re going to have for years going forward.”

Gushue’s opponent in Saturday’s quarterfinals (3:30 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 360) is still TBD as he meets the winner of the morning tiebreaker between Calgary’s Charley Thomas and Niklas Edin of Sweden (8:30 a.m. ET, admission is free). 

“We played [Team Thomas] at the Elite 10 and they’ve had a good year this year so it’s kind of a breakout season for them,” Gushue said. “If they get through they’re going to be tough. Obviously, Niklas is a two-time world champion so they’re going to be tough. Anybody you play in this event is going to be a challenge and it’s going to be a tough game. The good thing about it is we do have hammer.”

It was an incredible day at the office for Thomas as he started with a 0-3 record and in a must-win situation in order to stay in contention to scoring his first two victories in the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling series and hanging on for at least another game. Thomas took down Winnipeg’s Reid Carruthers (1-4) during the evening draw with a straight runback scoring four in the eighth end to win 8-4 and secure a spot in the tiebreaker. 

“I felt like we were playing pretty good even in our three losses,” Thomas said. “It was just one bad end every game so it feels nice to kind of put eight good ends together in both of these games and get rewarded for it.”

Earlier Friday, Thomas made a sick runback triple for a single in the third end during his 5-2 victory over defending champ Brad Jacobs of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Although it was only for one point, it was a confidence booster for Thomas.

“That’s the kind of end that we had in the three games prior to that but we didn’t get out of it with a single,” Thomas said. “I kind of knew when I made it that we had a good chance at winning the game for sure.” 

Elsewhere in Draw 13, Jacobs (3-2) counted three in the first and rolled out to a 7-1 victory over Kevin Koe of Calgary and hand the world champion (4-1) his first loss of the event.

Hometown hero John Epping (1-4) finished on a high note slipping late past Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen 6-3 scoring a deuce in the seventh and stealing one coming home. McEwen advanced with a 2-3 record and avoided a tiebreaker due to a superior draw-to-the-button shootout score and will play No. 2 seed Koe. 

Laycock and Jacobs clash in a battle of 3-2 teams with Scotland’s David Murdoch and Glenn Howard of Penetanguishene, Ont., advancing earlier Friday with 3-2 records and set to meet as well.

The women’s quarterfinals were set following the late afternoon draw featuring Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones vs. Edmonton’s Val Sweeting, Ottawa’s Rachel Homan vs. Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson, defending women’s champion Eve Muirhead of Scotland vs. American Erika Brown, and Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland vs. Edmonton’s Kelsey Rocque. Watch on Sportsnet ONE Saturday at Noon ET.

NOTES: The Players’ Championship is the fourth major and sixth event of the 2015-16 Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling season and runs through to Sunday at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre. … The Rogers Grand Slam Cup will also be awarded to the overall season champions following the conclusion of the Players’ Championship. Rachel Homan mathematically clinched the women’s title with the men’s champion to be determined. … Winners of the Players’ Championship earn berths to the season-ending Humpty’s Champions Cup running April 26 to May 1 in Sherwood Park, Alta.