News Champions Cup

SHERWOOD PARK, Alta. — Reid Carruthers couldn’t believe it.

The table was set in the extra end for the Winnipeg native to win his first career Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling title as a skip during the Humpty’s Champions Cup men’s final Sunday against John Epping at the sold-out Sherwood Park Arena Sports Centre.

Epping had just one exposed stone parked in the house while both teams also had rocks just hanging out at the top on the fringe, undetermined whether they would actually factor into play.

Carruthers threw his last shot and then came the dreaded words.

“Curl! Curl!”

It wasn’t a direct hit, catching just enough of the side of the counter to cause them both to split and spill as Epping lightly brushed Carruthers’s rock out of the house. A dejected Carruthers must have felt like a kicker missing a field goal and having to watch it sail wide right.

A measurement determined neither one of the top stones were biting the paint and were merely at the event horizon of the rings. They say curling is a game of inches, but in this case just half an inch would do. The blank meant the season would extend yet another end to determine the first-ever Humpty’s Champions Cup men’s victor.

“Derek (Samagalski) had made an unbelievable shot, which had basically won the game for us, especially if I had made that hit and roll or made the hit, obviously,” Carruthers said. “Just a little bit nervous. I was thinking a little bit too much when I was throwing the last rock. It’s a spot that curls, so instead of focusing on just throwing the rock good I thought about the fact that it was going to curl and I threw it a little more positive than I needed to.”

That could have been the deflating moment for Team Carruthers as they would have been left to dwell all summer about “what if?” It was their third Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling final of the season and after coming oh-so-close the previous two times, they had to be wondering when would they finally win one.

Carruthers had claimed one before during his days playing front-end for legendary skip Jeff Stoughton when they captured the 2013 National. Following the end of the previous Olympic cycle in 2014, Team Stoughton split with Carruthers returning to skip, reuniting with Samagalski at second and adding two new members in third Braeden Moskowy from Saskatchewan and lead Colin Hodgson from Alberta.

They rose up the ranks fast in their first year together last season highlighted with a win at the Manitoba men’s provincial championship, defeating Mike McEwen in the final, to advance to the Tim Hortons Brier. They also quickly became regulars on the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling circuit playing in four of the five events and qualifying for the playoffs three times.

Advancing beyond the quarterfinals was their first major hurdle to clear this season in year No. 2. The National in November was their breakout performance knocking off Olympic gold medallist Brad Jacobs in the quarterfinals scoring a deuce in the final end to win 7-5. That set up a semifinal meeting with Glenn Howard, winner of 16 Grand Slam titles, but Carruthers stole a key pair of points early and held on during the 5-2 victory.

The final against Brad Gushue of St. John’s, N.L. — playing in his first event since his frightening fall face-first onto the ice at the Masters — could have gone either way. Carruthers made a pair of desperate go-big-or-go-home shots that didn’t go his way giving up a steal of one in the second to open the scoring and then a three-count in the final end that iced the game 7-2 for Gushue.

Team Carruthers’s next trip to the final came at the Elite 10 in mid-March after edging the recently crowned Brier champs (and soon-to-be world champs) Team Kevin Koe during a draw-to-the-button shootout in the semis. Carruthers’s opponent for the final was Gushue again. Another SO was required to determine the champion with Gushue coming out on top once more.

Fortunately for Carruthers, he wouldn’t have to face his nemesis Gushue in the Humpty’s Champions Cup final. Epping played lights out in the semis making almost all of his shots and putting in a similar performance like he did during the Meridian Canadian Open final in December where he threw a perfect game to beat Gushue. The Toronto native Epping didn’t have to be perfect this time around — “only” throwing 92 percent — but it was good enough to upend the reigning Rogers Grand Slam Cup winner.

Carruthers’s road to the final featured a 3-1 round-robin record (his lone loss was to . . . Gushue) and included a 4-3 quarterfinal win over Koe and a victory by a similar in the semis over McEwen, who held the hammer coming home all tied up 3-3 but hit and rolled out with his last as Carruthers counted another stone in the house to steal the spot in the final.

Carruthers opened the final against Epping with the hammer and blanked the first three ends in search of a deuce and/or keeping the hammer in the even ends. A forced single in four wasn’t in the cards and Epping scored a pair in five to take the lead. Another blank in six proceeded and Carruthers finally got his two in seven to be one-up without the hammer coming home.

It looked like Epping was in line to get more than a single and win in eight until Carruthers nailed his first skip stone for a double and limited his opponent to just the one point, requiring an extra end but relinquishing the hammer.

The reset button was hit after the first extra end sending it into a rare double extra. As bizarre as that sounds, it actually wasn’t a first for Epping, not even this season, as he fell to Scotland’s David Murdoch in a second extra end during the round-robin stage at the Players’ Championship just two weeks prior.

But this was different. This was for all the gold in an event that was the first of its kind for the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling series. Unlike the other events where teams receive invites based on their order of merit ranking, the Humpty’s Champions Cup required teams to win a high-profile tournament in order to clinch a spot. This meant the winner would be the champion among the champions in a place adjacent to Edmonton, dubbed the City of Champions.

At least Carruthers could breathe somewhat a sigh of relief that he would get a do-over by still holding the hammer in the second extra end and didn’t throw the game away ala our football kicker analogy.

His second chance to deliver the high-pressure, game-winning shot was actually much trickier. Epping sat a triangle of stones in the house with one of them in the four-foot circle and forcing Carruthers to not only draw but land on the lid.

It almost looked like a disaster as Samagalski backed off on the sweeping, saying, “Heavy, heavy, heavy.” Moskowy dropped to the ice looking defeated. Epping went to work with his brush to drag it further, but the rock came to a halt just in time. Carruthers avoided a Spiethian meltdown and pointed to the sky, No. 1, scoring the 4-3 victory and the inaugural Humpty’s Champions Cup men’s title.

“I actually said to the guys, ‘I think it’s there, I think it’s there,’” Carruthers said. “The biggest thing too is when you’re sweeping one of those shots, their adrenaline is going too so it’s actually tough for them to under-sweep that because the miss for them is going to be to over-sweep it, but they’re great judgers of the rock and we made a big one.”

“I was just anxious to sweep the rock and hoping I didn’t slip and fall and burn it or over-sweep it or under-sweep it so I wasn’t really nervous going into that one,” Hodgson added. “We had a similar situation in the provincial final last year. I was nervous that time so I got it out.”

Samagalski held the crystal trophy up high during their photoshoot and kissed it for good measure. For Hodgson, Samagalski and Moskowy, winning their first Grand Slam of Curling title ever left them all nearly speechless.

“It feels pretty awesome,” Hodgson said. “I don’t have anything else.”

“It’s unbelievable. Since the Slams have been out, as a young kid watching them on TV, I’ve always dreamed about playing in them. Luckily I’ve had the chance to play in some in the last six or seven years,” Samagalski said. “We were close this year losing two finals. We wanted to give it a go here this week and what a performance. There are no words for what I feel like right now.”

“Everyone who knows curling knows these are the hardest events to win,” Moskowy said. “You’ve got the top teams in the world and this is the event where you’ve got basically all of the best teams throughout the year who have won spiels at one event.

“We sat down last summer and one of our goals was if we legitimately want to be a top team in the world we have to go and win a Slam. To do that in just our second year together, it’s awesome, man. I can’t even put it into words, I’m so excited.”

Having their names be the first ones on the trophy gave the victory a little extra cachet.

“It’s a huge honour, obviously, playing against all bonspiel winners but any Slam victory is a great victory,” Carruthers said. “To have your name on the first one is a pretty cool feeling.”

“It was a great event and I think the players all loved it and judging by the crowds it was well-received on the fans’s behalf,” Moskowy added. “It’s a nice little tidbit to throw on top there, a little icing on the cake to be the first ones crowned.”

Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones topped Ottawa’s Rachel Homan to win the Humpty’s Champions Cup women’s title, making it a double win not only for their province but for the DEKALB Superspiel event in Morris, Man., as well.

“It’s crazy actually,” Moskowy said. “Jenn’s team won the DEKALB Superspiel, that’s how they were in, and that’s what we won too, and then we both won the event. Maybe there’s something to say about the old Superspiel.”

Having finally wrapped up the season, all that was left was to assign final marks for the report cards. Carruthers, who also works as a school teacher, gave his team a sure spot on the honour roll.

“I would give it an A-minus now,” Carruthers said. “Before we came into this bonspiel I might have said a little bit different but obviously this is a great way to ride into the summer with a nice, big win.”