Reid Carruthers had a busy Thursday night at the Montana’s Brier, despite it initially being a day off for him. Carruthers, the Manitoba skip, secured the last playoff position in Pool A. This occurred when Manitoba’s Matt Dunstone narrowly outperformed Canada’s Brad Gushue in a close 7-6 game, securing the top seed in the nine-team group.
Gushue clinched the second seed, while Carruthers took the third spot, thanks to a tiebreaker advantage over Northern Ontario’s John Epping. Carruthers followed the game from his coach’s room at the team hotel near Prospera Place. “We’re just driving to top up on some groceries,” he said when reached shortly after the draw. “Because we’re staying longer now.”
The three teams will compete in the qualification round on Friday. The Page playoffs are scheduled for Saturday and the final is set for Sunday night. The Pool B playoff picture was set to be finalized after the evening draw.
In a competition between two unbeaten teams, Alberta’s Brad Jacobs and Saskatchewan’s Mike McEwen were to vie for the top seed. Ontario’s Sam Mooibroek and Nova Scotia’s Owen Purcell, both standing at 4-3, were set to compete for the third seed.
Dunstone surrendered three points in the third end when he missed an angle-raise attempt. Gushue stole a point in the fourth for a 4-1 lead but Dunstone later leveled the score with a runback double for a deuce in the seventh.
Down 6-5 but in control with the hammer, Gushue made an uncharacteristic mistake in the ninth end when his stone stayed in the rings on a blank attempt. This gave Dunstone the hammer with the game tied and he scored a single when Gushue’s draw was light.
“It was all about being the best team over the course of 10 ends,” Dunstone said. “That was our mindset going into today and I thought we did that. That’s why you saw the result that you did.”
The win allowed Dunstone (7-1) the hammer in the 1-2 qualifier on Friday against the second seed in Pool B. It was the first loss for Gushue (7-1) in the eight-game round-robin.
“We’re still in it and we’re still playing really good,” said Gushue, who’s aiming for a record fourth straight Brier title. “We just had a bad five ends really. That was our first bad stretch this week.”
The winners of the 1-2 games progress to the Page Playoff 1-2 game on Saturday. The losing teams will fall into the Page Playoff 3-4 game against the winners of Friday’s 3-4 qualifier games.
The Page Playoff 3-4 winner moves on to Sunday’s semi-final against the Page Playoff 1-2 loser. The Page Playoff 1-2 winner gets a direct berth into the final. Carruthers and Epping finished with 6-2 records but the Winnipeg skip had the tiebreaker advantage because he won their lone meeting.
Carruthers, who won the Brier in 2011 with Jeff Stoughton, said a nervy two-plus hours of screen time with teammates was capped with an in-room celebration. “It was loud,” he said with a chuckle. “I was worried about a noise complaint.”
The Brier winner will represent Canada at the BKT world men’s curling championship starting March 29 in Moose Jaw, Sask.
