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The race to the playoffs is down to the final lap at the Tim Hortons Brier in St. John’s, N.L.

Hometown hero Brad Gushue is guaranteed a spot in the Page 1-2 game, but the other three playoff spots are still up for grabs heading into the last round-robin draw.

Gushue came through in the clutch Thursday picking up a pair of extra-end victories to move up to an 8-2 record and tie Manitoba’s Mike McEwen for first place in the standings.

“We expected to be here,” Gushue said in his post-game media scrum. “Even though we got off to a rough start and we had some nerves and a lot of stress early on, but I always felt we would get here. There’s no set path in how you win this event. You could go undefeated, but you could lose four times and go through a tiebreaker, you never know. We just had to put our head down and keep working and we’re in good position.”

Regardless of Friday morning’s outcome, Newfoundland and Labrador is in the 1-2 game while McEwen still needs a win over Quebec’s Jean-Michel Menard to set up the meeting with Gushue. A loss for McEwen, who has been atop of the table all week, could even slip his team into a tiebreaker depending how everything else shapes up.

“Just to have an opportunity to win tomorrow morning to get into the 1-2 game is tremendous,” McEwen told reporters. “You couldn’t ask for anything more than that. It’s a long week and we’ve started to climb up again as far as our performance, so I feel really positive going into Friday right now.”

While Gushue and McEwen both have another preliminary match to go, Northern Ontario’s Brad Jacobs is done for now at 8-3 and plays the waiting game to see where he ends up once the dust settles.

Jacobs, who won the 2013 Brier as the fourth seed, is prepared to battle it out from this point onward.

“I think we’ll probably just be in a do-or-die situation, backs against the wall,” he said in his media scrum. “It’s all good. We won the Brier out of the four-spot. There are a lot of teams that have done that, I think recently. We’ll see where we fall. We’ll see what 8-3 gets us. We’re not too sure at this point. This Brier is all clustered at the top. We’ll see what happens.”

Defending champ Kevin Koe (Team Canada) and Quebec’s Jean-Michel Menard are next in line tied at 7-3. John Morris of B.C. sits on the sidelines at 7-4 and will hope Koe and Menard lose their last games to drop to his level and force tiebreakers.

Morris told reporters he just has to wait and see if the “curling gods” are on his side.

“We beat two of the top four teams,” Morris said. “Those two tough losses against Ontario and Quebec are really stinging right now because [if] we’d beat one of those guys we’re in great position. We’d beat two of them we’re in fantastic position and I felt that we deserved at least one of those. Proud of the guys for playing gutsy all week and we’ve just got to sit back and keep our fingers crossed now.”

Gushue’s clutch performance lands playoff spot

If Gushue is feeling any pressure playing in front of a capacity hometown crowd, he sure isn’t showing it.

The cool-as-a-cucumber Gushue delivered a pair of dicey draw shots in extra ends to put his Newfoundland and Labrador team right where they want to be in the top playoff game.

Gushue needed to hit the four-foot circle on his last to escape with an 8-7 win over Ontario’s Glenn Howard in the afternoon and needed some more late-game heroics in his main event matchup against Koe during the evening.

While it was a rematch of last year’s final, it was no repeat with Gushue pulling through 7-6 this time.

Giving up a three-ender in the first wasn’t the ideal start for Gushue, however, he chipped away at the deficit with a deuce in the third and eventually tied it up 4-4 with a single steal in six.

“You have to give Kevin and his team a whole lot of credit in the first end. They played eight perfect shots,” Gushue said. “We had a couple half-shots and all of a sudden it was a three. We didn’t play that poorly in that end, they just made everything perfect. For us, if you’re going to give up a three it was a good time to do it.”

Fortunately for Gushue there were still 10 more ends to go and while he believed teammates Mark Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker wanted to strike back, he preferred the slow burn.

“I kind of stressed to the guys in the second end let’s be patient because they seemed to want to force the issue. A blank there wasn’t going to hurt us. We had to stay alive at that point,” he said. “We were patient, got our deuce and forced them, got a steal, and got a little lucky in six. There’s no doubt about that with him missing his shot there. It’s a good character game for sure. You need a win like that through a week like this to pull it out at the end.”

The key turning point came in the ninth end when Koe, who held the hammer, missed a double attempt with his first skip stone, hitting just one counter, and Gushue capitalized with his last by burying it to the top of the button to sit two. Koe opted to tap the open one off to the side and concede the steal to trail 6-5.

Gushue continued to find the mark to sit three counters in the 10th and hold Koe to just a single to send things into the extra end.

The 2006 Olympic gold medallist Gushue, who finished at 93 percent, was on the money again with his last in the extra end drawing it through two counters in the four-foot circle to land at the back of the button.

Add in his 92 percent performance against Howard and it was quite the day at the office for Gushue.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s remaining round-robin game is against Nova Scotia’s Jamie Murphy. Nova Scotia (4-6) slowed down after battling through the pre-qualifier, however, they’re still not one to be taken lightly and you have to imagine Gushue will want to enter the playoffs on a positive note.

Koe splits to stay in the mix

Koe was the marksman in the afternoon draw firing at an outstanding 95 percent clip during his 6-3 win over McEwen.

The Calgary team — which also includes third Marc Kennedy, second Brent Laing and lead Ben Hebert — took two in the ninth to pull ahead by one. McEwen had the hammer coming home in the 10th, but was forced to attempt a Hot Shot-esque double raise double takeout for the victory. McEwen didn’t get all of the angles right, however, and Koe’s pair of counters remained untouched.

On top of the three-ender to start against N.L., Koe pulled off a great around-the-horn shot in the fifth end to force them to a single, but Gushue was just a tad sharper in the end.

Koe looks to win his third Brier title in four years and also become the first back-to-back champ since another Kevin from Alberta — Mr. Martin — pulled it off in 2008-09 (coincidentally with Kennedy and Hebert up front).

Canada clashes with New Brunswick’s Mike Kennedy (1-9) to wrap up round-robin play Friday morning.

The win over McEwen officially eliminated teams with five losses knocking out Adam Casey and Team Saskatchewan. Casey, who dropped an 8-5 decision to Jacobs in the morning, couldn’t end on a high note falling to Morris 7-6 during the evening round to finish with a 5-6 record.

McEwen, Menard set for showdown

The big tilt Friday morning is the aforementioned McEwen-Menard match, which could set off a frenzy of playoff scenarios depending on the outcome.

McEwen shook off the loss to Koe with an 8-3 thumping over Howard. Meanwhile, Menard went 2-0 Thursday defeating Jamie Koe of the Northwest Territories 8-6 and Kennedy 9-4.

At least fate is in their hands, but we’ll play it out and see how it goes as far as playoff matchups and possibly tiebreaker(s) line up.