News Elite 10

FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. — Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen was on point defeating Niklas Edin of Sweden 2-and-1 to capture the inaugural Syncrude Elite 10 title Sunday.

McEwen was already in the lead 1-up with the hammer in the seventh end and nailed a runback with his final shot to sit two and claim another point to secure his team’s fifth career Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling championship and second of the season.

“It’s the inaugural Syncrude Elite 10, no one ever played this format before, so winning it has an extra cool factor,” McEwen said.

It’s the second Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling championship and eighth World Curling Tour title on the season for McEwen, third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld as the team has been money all year on the circuit. However, they admitted it took a bit of time to find adapt to the match play format, where teams must score two or more or steal at least one to win an end.

“It probably took three or four games, I don’t think I knew what I was doing the first half of the round robin,” said McEwen, who captured the National in November. “It took some growing pains to figure out what our risk-comfort level was. I think we were taking on too much early in the event. We did a better job managing that for the back-half of the event and had really good results as far as converting a lot of steals and actually the last couple games we were able to fire up the hammer conversion too.” 

Wozniak added: “We really were struggling early and were able to put it together yesterday and kept it going today. When Mike and B.J. play the way they played the last three games, they were pretty tough to beat. It was a good battle in the end. Niklas made a lot of great shots to keep him in it. I’m just proud of the way we played and put it together.”

McEwen opened the game with the hammer and drew for two to start 1-up. Edin replied with an angle raise for a deuce to take the second end. McEwen took the lead for good in the third sitting two after his first skip stone and didn’t have to throw his last as Edin couldn’t squeeze his last shot through the narrow port of guards. 

McEwen praised his counterpart Edin, who had been making ridiculous runbacks all week long to power his team from a 0-2 start to win five consecutive elimination games to reach the final. The sixth end in particular saw Edin fire a long pistol shot for a runback double peel and a point to stay in the game.

“It wasn’t a perfect game but there were some amazing shots. Not just on our side, Nik made some beauties too,” said McEwen, who carried his team shooting an outstanding 98 percent in the final. “I thought the first three or four ends were like as good curling as you’ll ever see anywhere.” 

Team McEwen now shift their attention to the Players’ Championship, the fifth and final Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling event of the season, April 7-12 in Toronto. A win at the Players’ Championship would not only cap their impressive season but also complete a career Grand Slam.

“We really want to win the Players’ badly,” said McEwen, who finished runner-up at the 2013 Players’ Championship in Toronto. “That’s the best-of-the-best Slam there is. That would be amazing going out on top winning that in Toronto.”