After a crazy few days in Southern Ontario, which I profiled in last week’s paper, I boarded an airplane to my hometown to have a fairly relaxing time the only way I know how.
For the second half of my pseudo-Christmas vacation, I made my way back to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. last Monday so I could attend the entire Boost National Grand Slam of Curling event at the Essar Centre.
On a working level, I’ve been lucky enough to cover a few Grand Slam of Curling competitions over the last couple of years, including the Meridian Canadian Open that was held in North Battleford back in January, and I’ve been inside the arena for the entirety of the 2010 and 2015 Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Sault Ste. Marie and Moose Jaw.
As a fan though, the closest I’ve come to attending a full event was as a kid when the 1996 Ontario Scotties provincial playdowns were held in the Soo, but I think I only attended a few draws at the event.
So this was a first for me where I was able to go to the rink to every game. It felt odd leaving the arena in between draws instead of sticking around the building for nearly 12 hours, but it was nice to actually watch the games taking place instead of running around the building taking photos, typing articles and trying to interview as many curlers as possible.
One thing that you may notice when seeing the photos with this article of the view from my seats – including one at ice level from Saturday’s semifinal between Casey Scheidegger of Lethbridge, Alta. and Tracy Fleury of Sudbury, Ont. – is that there were a lot more empty seats and not all of the arena was used for seating as it was at the Civic Centre almost a year ago.
Although it wasn’t a sellout, and a loss in the tiebreaker game Friday night for local hero and defending Olympic men’s curling gold medalist Brad Jacobs played a part in not having as big a crowd as their could have been on the weekend, I felt like the attendance was still pretty decent for a Grand Slam of Curling event.
With almost 5,000 seats at the Essar Centre, where it’s main duty is to host games for the Ontario Hockey League’s Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, it’s going to be tough to try and fill it for a curling event that’s not the Scotties or the Tim Hortons Brier.
As a result of that, putting the video board up on one end of the rink made for a much better atmosphere on TV of showing fans in the seat, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you see that more in the future as the event looks to expand and goes to arenas that are bigger than the Civic Centre and might be tougher to fill.
Moving on to the curling, this was a pretty big event for the Canadian rinks as many of the competitors on the men’s and women’s side will soon be heading to Ottawa next week to compete in the Roar of the Rings tournament where the winners will represent Canada at the Winter Olympics next year.
With so many top teams from this country competing at the Boost National, you could imagine my surprise when the champion matchup Sunday afternoon featured Scotland’s Bruce Mouat and South Korea’s Chang-Min Kim.
Mouat captured the World Junior Curling Championship in 2016 and is trying to move his way into the Scottish curling power rankings as Olympic representative Kyle Smith is the skip that everyone is chasing right now.
Leading into the final, Mouat played the role of a giant-killer as he knocked out Jacobs in a tiebreaker game, Kevin Koe in the quarter-final and Mike McEwen in the semifinal, as three of the top teams in the world found themselves falling behind by big margins.
Meanwhile, Kim was competing in his first ever Grand Slam event as his rink prepares to be the host side at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in a couple of months.
With an aggressive approach to the game, Kim qualified for the playoffs and defeated Reid Carruthers in the quarter-finals before roaring back from a 7-4 deficit after seven ends to stun John Epping in an extra-end semifinal thriller.
Despite it being two unknown teams, the final was a pretty good affair with both teams trading points until the seventh end, when Mouat put up a four-ender in the seventh end to pick up a 9-4 win and become the youngest men’s skip to capture a Grand Slam title.
The women’s event was rather straightforward by comparison, as defending Olympic title-holder Jennifer Jones defeated Scheidegger by a score of 8-7 to win her second straight event.
At this point, it’s hard to see anyone topping Jones when the Olympic Trials get going in a couple of weeks.
I mean, Val Sweeting has a good chance of topping her and Rachel Homan is probably the best bet to pull off an upset, if she doesn’t have one of her tire fires along the way, but the way Jones is playing at the moment it feels like she can force any team into making a mistake and capitalizing on it.
While I haven’t mentioned him yet, I believe defending Brier and World Champion Brad Gushue is the undisputed favourite to go to the Olympics.
He lost to McEwen in the quarter-final in the Soo, but he’s been untouchable at all the other events this year and I expect him to be in that role in Ottawa starting next Saturday.
I could keep talking curling all day, but I need to get on the plane now so I can get back to North Battleford for Tuesday’s North Stars game.
