Playoffs set at Brier: Buffalo teams lead charge among six still standing
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Gather ’round the campfire, folks. Have you heard the one about the curling herd in Kelowna, B.C.?
Both Buffalo teams are into the 2025 Montana’s Brier playoffs.
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Playoffs set at Brier: Buffalo teams lead charge among six still standing Back to video
Yessiree … the two entries from Manitoba — one skipped by Matt Dunstone, and the other bossed by Reid Carruthers — are among six squads left in the bid for the Canadian men’s curling championship.
“Huge for us,” said Dunstone, whose crew from Winnipeg’s Fort Rouge Curling Club stampeded not only into the playoffs but into first place in Pool A with Thursday matinee’s beefy 7-6 victory over defending three-time champion Brad Gushue.
“Nice to get our Manitoba counterparts into the playoffs, too.”
Indeed, Carruthers and his fellow Winnipeg crew are in, to boot, because of Dunstone’s victory.
Because Dunstone’s decision improved him to a 7-1 record — the same as Canada’s mark — that left Carruthers and Northern Ontario’s John Epping matched at 6-2 after Pool A’s round-robin wrap-up Thursday afternoon.
Since only three teams qualified for playoffs from each pool, the head-to-head tiebreaker kicked in, giving Carruthers and his Granite Curling Club rink-mates the edge over Epping for the third and final berth. It was that same tie-breaking procedure — with Thursday’s result — that put Dunstone atop Gushue in the pool.
How’s that for helping out bitter Buffalo rivals who were on the precipice of being eliminated?
“Right now, it stings a bit,” Epping told reporters, after his Ontario team enjoyed arguably the best week of all Pool A participants but came away on the wrong side of scores — by inches, really — in battles with both Gushue and Carruthers.
“If you would’ve said at the start of the week that with the pool that we had we’d go 6-2 and have the best shootout (distance to the button) in our pool and not make it into playoffs, we’d be shocked,” continued Epping. “But overall, we had a great week and there’s a lot to build on. We beat some good teams …
“Really solid performance.”
Just not solid enough.
Certainly, at least, not like Dunstone’s final act of the round robin — a monster effort, complete with a championship-worthy comeback.
“It was just staying the course,” Dunstone said. “I even thought when we were down 4-1 that we outplayed them.
“It was all about being the best team over the course of 10 ends. That was our mindset going in to the game, and I thought we did that. And that’s why you saw the result you did.”
Down 4-1 through four ends, it looked grim for the Winnipeggers, especially against Gushue. But deuces in the fifth and seventh and a rare miss by Canada’s super-skip on a hit-and-roll to blank the ninth end, awarding the all-important hammer back to Dunstone coming home, rallied the Winnipeg side to victory.
“We’re in crunch-time,” Dunstone said. “If we lose that game, we’ve gotta win four straight games to win the Brier against a bunch of great teams.
“We lose that game and we’re playing for our lives (Friday night in the 3-v-4 seeding game). Now we have that second life and have a chance to get into the 1-v-2 (Page playoff) game Saturday.
“We’re not looking at starting games without hammer now or teams picking rocks against us. There’s so many reasons why that was such a big win.”
Late Thursday, Alberta’s Brad Jacobs and Saskatchewan’s Mike McEwen matched up looking for a big win, and it was Jacobs grabbing the 9-6 victory to earn top spot in Pool B.
Even bigger was the meeting that saw Nova Scotia’s Owen Purcell defeat Ontario’s Sam Mooibroek, giving Purcell the third and final playoff berth in the pool. The Bluenosers accomplished the feat with a 7-3 triumph in what was a winner-goes-to-playoffs battle.
HOW DOES THE PLAYOFF SYSTEM WORK?
With the top three teams from each pool determined, it’s onward to Friday’s qualifying round, which remains the same — a Page playoff-type format — from the 2024 Brier in Regina:
• The first-place teams of each pool — Manitoba’s Dunstone and Jacobs — crossover to play the other pool’s second-place teams — Jacobs/McEwen and Gushue — in 1-v-2 seeding games (Dunstone v. McEwen, and Jacobs v. Gushue) early Friday (3:30 p.m. ET)
• The winners of those 1-v-2 seeding games advance to the playoff round Saturday, while the losers drop to the 3-v-4 seeding games later Friday (9:30 p.m. ET) against the third-place teams in each pool (Carruthers and Purcell), which are elimination contests
• The winners of those 3-v-4 seeding games then advance to the playoff round (Saturday), which consists of four finalists
HOW DOES A CHAMPION GET CROWNED?
With just four teams remaining, the Page playoff kicks in again Saturday and Sunday:
• The winners of the qualifying round’s 3-v-4 games play each other early Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET), with the winner advancing to Sunday’s early semifinal (9:30 p.m. ET) and the loser being eliminated
• The winners of the qualifying round’s 1-v-2 games play each other late Saturday (9:30 p.m. ET), with the winner advancing straight to Sunday’s late final and the loser advancing to Sunday’s early semifinal (2 p.m. ET)
• The semifinal winner then advances to Sunday’s late final (8 p.m. ET), after which the Brier champion will be crowned
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