{"id":1537,"date":"2023-06-08T14:08:29","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T20:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/?p=1537"},"modified":"2023-09-07T16:26:22","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T22:26:22","slug":"shot-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/shot-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Shot of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s not clear what “shot of the year” means, but let’s be clear: I have not watched every shot thrown in the curling world this year. What I have done is interrogated my shot database<\/a>, found the made shots that were estimated to be the most difficult, tracked them down on video, if possible, and made a totally arbitrary decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A great shot is really in the eye of the beholder, but for this beholder, greatness is only a starting point. A shot that unlocks interesting points of discussion is a bonus. And it helps if it’s something few people have seen. So Nik Edin’s spinner<\/a> is not under consideration. (Plus, Edin lost that game and I want winners<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My choice took place in Draw 3 of the Men’s World Junior Championships<\/a> in the Bundesst\u00fctzpunkt Arena<\/a> in F\u00fcssen, Germany. This was a doozy of a game<\/a> between Canada and Switzerland that would go to an extra end after Canadian skip Landan Rooney converts a sick angle raise for two on his last shot in the 10th. (The video of this game is available<\/a> on Recast for one U.S. dollar, but I can hardly recommend it as the video is nearly unwatchable due to frequent glitches.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The extra end is almost a mirror image of the 10th, with several rocks in play from the get-go. Canada puts two guards on the center-line and real curling ensues as both teams play to the middle of the house. Hooray for the no-tick rule!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Switzerland spends the next few shots narrowly missing double peels. On their third’s last shot, Jan Iseli misses a heavy draw in an attempt to move a Canadian stone off the button. Rooney guards on his first and Switzerland’s fourth, Philipp H\u00f6sli tries to tap his stones in the house to set up some options on his last shot. Canada, playing red, is still shot and faced with this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Switzerland currently has two ways to move the red stone off the button and get the win. Either play the thin angle raise on the right-most yellow, or run back the left-most red guard onto a yellow-yellow combination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canada has a lot of time to discuss their final shot. Recognizing that they can’t guard both of Switzerland’s options, the team discusses hitting the right-most yellow and rolling towards the center-line. This would take away the angle raise on the right and possibly disturb the angles enough for the run-back on the left to take away that shot as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After two minutes and 40 seconds of discussion, including a timeout, Canada appears to be committed to the shot. But then this happens:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Butterfly effect<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I wonder what would have happened if that guard hadn’t been accidentally bumped by Mitchell before Canada’s final shot. Canada was getting ready to commit to the hit-and-roll and something changed during the technical timeout. Rooney may have not talked himself into the guard without the extra time. The hit-and-roll may or may not have worked, but we’ll never know because of a random unrelated event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also interesting that the kicked guard was moved to give H\u00f6sli a bit more room to make the runback. The shot would have still been there anyway, but H\u00f6sli might have needed to go a bit wider to make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of the shot chosen by Canada, H\u00f6sli still had to make a difficult shot. If he misses, none of this other stuff matters and I’m not even aware the game happened. So kudos to Philipp H\u00f6sli for making one of the best shots of the year. His shot didn’t achieve the fame of Edin’s spinner, but it was a lot more interesting to talk about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not clear what “shot of the year” means, but let’s be clear: I have not watched every shot thrown in the curling world this year. What I have done is interrogated my shot database, found the made shots that were estimated to be the most difficult, tracked them down on video, if possible, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1537"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doubletakeout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}