North Bay, Ontario is the site for the first slam of the season. It’s where 32 of the best curling teams that care to compete in the first year of an Olympic cycle will gather to bring some early-season order to the curling world. That also means it’s prediction time around here. The first few […]
Something called the Hokkaido Bank Classic took place in Japan last weekend, and that means a new season of curling has begun. I’m not one of those people that wants a long curling offseason. Bring it on, I say. Having a regular summer schedule is probably a bit much, but a couple events in August […]
Last week, Team Mouat stunningly failed to make the playoffs of the Champions Cup. Bruce is still king of the world ratings and really, the team’s 1-4 performance wasn’t Bruce’s fault. Because I’m cheap, I didn’t see any of the event except for the Friday night draw provided free of charge by Sportsnet so I […]
This is not really a preview of the Champions Cup. It’s actually already started as I post this. If you want the Monte Carlo probabilities for the event they are here. The most interesting thing in this event full of lame-duck teams is that #77 Ryan Jacques is in the 12-team field on the men’s […]
Let’s catch up on curling news. There was a lot of talk about the ice issues at the Men’s World Championships in Las Vegas. And indeed, the ice was bad. Unfortunately, it was worse towards the end of the event and the ice issues were in full display for the gold medal game. Others can […]
The men’s worlds starts on Saturday in Vegas, and like the women, the field isn’t what it could be. Most notably, top-ranked Team Mouat won’t be in Vegas despite the fact that they wanted to be the Scottish representative. Seventh-ranked Team De Cruz is not here on account of losing to Team Schwaller in the […]
This is a really quick outline of the women’s worlds which starts in Prince George on Saturday. What with being an Olympic year, the field is a little watered down. The U.S., Scotland, and Japan are not sending their best teams. Theoretically, Canada wouldn’t be sending its best team either, but with Jennifer Jones pulling […]
The Brier starts on Friday, so let’s talk about it. This Brier is unusual is that Canada’s Olympic representative is playing in it. This has not happened before, and for good reason. Once you’ve played the Olympics, the goal of the last four years of your curling life, it’s going to be hard to get […]
The Olympics are over and I have some random disjointed thoughts. The events themselves had the character we were expecting. The women’s event could have gone a number of different ways and a team with four losses ended up beating another team with four losses in the gold medal game. On the other hand, the […]
I’m a fan of alternates being used at some point. Not for any strategic advantage, but just because I like seeing as many people as possible get an opportunity to throw a stone at the Olympics. It isn’t always possible for alternates to make it into a game. Some teams are grinding through the event […]