LETHBRIDGE, Alta. — After a whirlwind winter season that included an Olympic bronze medal in Beijing just a few weeks ago, expectations were rather low for Brad Gushue’s team at the Tim Hortons Brier.
His short-handed Wild Card One side would wildly exceed them.
With vice Mark Nichols out for the final weekend due to COVID-19, Gushue and teammates Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker pulled off a 9-8 victory over Alberta’s Kevin Koe on Sunday to win the national men’s curling championship for the fourth time in six years.
“This is pretty amazing,” Gushue said. “I never thought this would happen when Mark went down. It’s a bit of a shock for us.”
The St. John’s-based team won three straight must-win playoff games as a trio. Before topping Koe, Gushue beat Saskatchewan’s Colton Flasch in the 3-4 Page playoff and defeated Canada’s Brendan Bottcher in the semifinal.
With Koe’s side well-rested after winning the 1-2 Page game a night earlier, the near-sellout crowd at the Enmax Centre was treated to a back-and-forth battle with plenty of scoring.
Koe’s chance for a game-winning three-point end in the 10th was stifled by a Gushue raise double-takeout. Gushue then controlled the extra end and took out an Alberta stone on the four-foot ring for the victory.
“What the three of us pulled off here the last few days, man oh man, it’s pretty crazy,” said Gushue, who threw 93 per cent. “I never thought a team of three could go through a gauntlet of Koe, Bottcher and Flasch in a Brier playoff.”
Both teams struggled somewhat at the outset. Gallant flashed a stone in the second end that led to a Koe deuce. Alberta vice B.J. Neufeld rubbed guards twice in the third end and Gushue drew for three after a Koe runback missed wide.
A Koe tap for two gave Alberta a 4-3 lead into the fifth-end break.
Gushue picked up his second three-ender of the game in the sixth. Koe cleared one stone on a triple-takeout attempt and Gushue drew the four-foot to regain the lead.
“The three-pointers was the theme for us today,” Gallant said. “We had some big ends and just capitalized on them. That was the difference.”
Koe made a hit for two to tie the game in the seventh after Gushue failed to bury a hit-and-roll attempt. Gushue was forced to a single in the eighth and stole a point in the ninth when Koe’s draw was light.
In the 10th, Koe could only hit for two and the tie, giving up hammer in the process.
Koe, who threw 81 per cent, was unable to build for a steal in the extra end. One Alberta stone was on the 12-foot ring and Koe drew his final stone to the four-foot before Gushue cleared it and stuck for the victory.
“I thought this one was ours for the taking,” Koe said. “We were playing good.”
Gushue’s fourth career Brier title as a skip tied him with Koe, Kevin Martin, Randy Ferbey and Ernie Richardson for top spot on the all-time list. It’s also the first time that a wild-card entry has won the Brier.
“I’m definitely on a high right now,” Gallant said. “This is exciting. I can’t believe we got that done. I’ll be on cloud nine for a few more days.”
Gushue’s team trained in British Columbia for a few weeks in late January before heading to China and taking third place at the Winter Games.
After the long flight home, they got a chance to enjoy a few days of rest before making the trek to Lethbridge.
Gushue admitted his gas tank was about half full throughout the week, but his team still won all eight round-robin games.
When Nichols went down, he pegged his team’s chances of victory at less than 10 per cent given the mental and physical drain of playing as a threesome.
Now the team is $108,000 richer and will soon represent Canada once again, this time at the April 2-10 world men’s curling championship in Las Vegas.
Koe, from Calgary, and his team of Neufeld, John Morris and Ben Hebert earned $60,000 for silver. Bottcher’s rink claimed $40,000.
Kerri Einarson won her third straight Scotties Tournament of Hearts title last month. She’ll wear the Maple Leaf at the March 19-27 women’s world curling championship in Prince George, B.C.
Overall attendance over the 10-day Brier was 74,238. Gushue will return as Team Canada at the 2023 Brier at the Budweiser Gardens in London, Ont.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 13, 2022.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
