Scotties underway: Focus only on curling now for 'excited' Team Einarson

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And so it’s begun in Thunder Bay. The quest for the Canadian women’s curling crown is off and rolling at the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, much to the delight of fans and players alike.

For Kerri Einarson and her Manitoba squad, it’s almost more of a relief to have the 10-day event now underway.

Because it means curling and only curling — beyond, of course, the inevitable revival of Broomgate 2.0, but that’s everybody’s problem.

Indeed, after a year plagued by issues away from the rink — from Briane Harris’s controversial ban to Shannon Birchard’s undiagnosed injury — Einarson and her Gimli Curling Club crew is happy just to be in the hack competing rather than talking about team troubles off the pebbled ice.

“Yeah … it’s nice to just have a stable team going forward,” said Einarson, with a sense of ease in her words. “We had to make some really tough decisions, and it was not easy by any means. But this is the team we have going forward, and we’re going to focus on that and having the consistency.

“And … yeah … we’re all excited. We had some really great practices together looking forward to the Scotties.”

Game 1 for the four-time national champions was a win — a 6-4 test against Newfoundland and Labrador’s Brooke Godsland on Saturday in the Scotties second draw at T-Bay’s Fort William Gardens.

“Yeah … we’re going into it not putting any pressure on ourselves,” said Einarson, who heads into the week as one of the favourites — for the most part, the second shot behind Rachel Homan and the defending queens of Canadian women’s curling.

“Rachel is the one that won last year, so everyone’s going to be targeting her,” continued Einarson. “Of course, teams are going to want to play their very best against us, and we I know teams still really want to beat us. So we’re not going to take anyone lightly, but we’ll focus on ourselves and what we can control and stay positive and just go out there and play loose.”

Easier to do, for sure, in T-Bay, now that the off-ice obstacles have been set aside and decisions have been made for Curling Canada’s Season of Champions.

First in late December, skip Einarson and third Val Sweeting were forced to find a replacement for second Birchard, who has long suffered with knee issues, by turning to Karlee Burgess and drawing her away from Team Chelsea.

Then a few weeks later, they got word of lead Harris being reinstated after a controversial drug suspension kept her away from competitive curling for 10 months. But with the good news of Harris being exonerated — and a GoFundMe page set up by home-town Petersfield residents to cover the legal fees of her appeal — came a decision to be made on the lead position only weeks before the Scotties.

“Yeah … it was very difficult for all of us,” said Einarson, who opted to stick with Krysten Karwacki at lead after she took over for Harris in the hours ahead of last year’s Scotties — and then excelled. “It’s just a difficult situation, and time was not on our side for this year’s Scotties.

“When we got Briane’s news, we were all extremely happy for her, of course. And it was probably a relief for her, as it was for us.

“But unfortunately, with it being a month away from the biggest event of the season, just time wasn’t great.”

So it’s Einarson, Sweeting, Burgess, Karwacki and alternate Lauren Lenentine looking to regain the crown they earned from 2020-23 — the one they lost to Homan last winter in Calgary.

“Karlee’s been great,” added Einarson of Burgess. “We love her energy out there and her positivity, and she gives her input when it’s asked for. And she’s a great shot-maker.

“So she’s all around just a great teammate, and we are all super excited to have her on board.

“Things have seemed to click for us.”

WEATHER OR NOT

Weather nearly played a part in creating an early crisis at the Scotties.

With Eastern Canada getting hammered by snow, flights in and out of Toronto and Ottawa — two of the three major cities servicing Thunder Bay by air directly — delayed the arrival of a few teams and curlers by many hours.

B.C. champion Corryn Brown and her Kamloops rinkmates were among those hung up, as were Saskatchewan’s Nancy Martin and her Saskatoon crew.

But everybody was in T-Bay and ready to roll early Friday.

EXTRA ENDS

Friday night’s opening draw of the Scotties saw champion Homan and her Ottawa Curling Club crew (1-0) start with a 13-4 win over Prince Edward Island’s Jane DiCarlo (0-1), who went winless at last year’s event … The other Draw 1 games saw: Saskatchewan’s Martin carve out a 10-6 win over Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville (0-1); Alberta’s Kayla Skrlik (1-0) double up New Brunswick’s Melissa Adams (0-1) 8-4; and B.C.’s Brown (1-0) top Alberta’s Selena Sturmay (0-1) 11-4 … Saturday’s draws — all times ET and on TSN — are at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.

tsaelhof@postmedia.com

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