MOOSE JAW, Sask. — Suzanne Birt reached the championship round at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts a second straight year with higher ambitions.
The Prince Edward Island skip upped her workload on and off the ice to be ready for battle against some of the world’s best teams.
Birt joined Ontario’s Rachel Homan, Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson, the Jennifer Jones wild-card team, Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville and defending champion Chelsea Carey in the round of eight at the national women’s curling championship.
Tiebreaker games Thursday morning will determine the two teams that join them.
Birt’s taste of the championship round in last year’s Hearts in Sydney, N.S., had Birt believing her team could achieve more if it did more.
She finished outside the Page playoff at 6-5. Birt lost in an extra end to Homan in the championship round.
“We realized how close we were at the very end of the Scotties,” Birt said Wednesday. “You put a little extra work into it and anything can happen.”
She doubled her team’s World Curling Tour events over last season.
Her team worked with a physical trainer, a sports psychologist and enlisted the expertise of current Manitoba men’s champion Jason Gunnlaugson for analytics and strategy.
“Experience is a big thing, but a lot of hard work throughout the year is probably the most important thing,” the 38-year-old Birt said.
“You’ve got to work on every aspect of your game, strategy, technical, mental, analytics. It’s all a huge part of the game. We’ve worked very hard at that this year.”
The top four teams in each pool of eight carry their records with them into the championship round starting Thursday afternoon.
Manitoba (6-1) finished first in Pool A ahead of Northern Ontario (5-2). Carey’s Team Canada, Saskatchewan’s Robyn Silvernagle and New Brunswick’s Andrea Crawford were all (4-3).
The three-loss teams were 1-1 against each other in the round robin.
Carey earned the third seed by virtue of the draw-the-button competition that preceded the opening draw of the tournament.
Saskatchewan and New Brunswick will square off in a tiebreaker to determine the fourth seed in the pool.
Manitoba beat Alberta 8-5 to eliminate Alberta’s Laura Walker from contention.
Six-time Canadian champion Jones and three-time champ Homan topped Pool B at 6-1 ahead of Birt at 5-2.
Nova Scotia’s Mary-Anne Arsenault and B.C.’s Corryn Brown (4-3) will play a tiebreaker.
Teams in the championship round play four games against opponents from the other pool.
The four rinks with the best records advance to Saturday’s Page playoff. The semifinal and final are Sunday.
A 22-year-old Birt — then Suzanne Gaudet — made a stunning Hearts debut in 2003. She topped the preliminary round at 10-1 and finished third in the tournament.
Birt has yet to match her rookie success skipping P.E.I. an 11th time.
The two-time Canadian and former world junior champion was the fourth seed in the 2007 playoffs in Lethbridge, Alta., and lost out to Jones.
Ranked No. 9 among women’s teams in Canada compared to 25th a year ago, Birt opened the season reaching the quarterfinals of the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard in Ontario.
Birt finished top three in six of seven Atlantic Canada events the first half of the season.
“The more times you do something, like the 10,000-hour rule, that’s exactly what we needed to do this year is just get the reps in and make mistakes and learn from them,” second Meaghan Hughes said.
“We played a ton of games this season and did a lot of things differently.
“We worked with a strategy coach, we work with a trainer, we worked with a sports psychologist. We tried to look at all the different facets of our game and make sure we’re covering those off.”
Hughes is among the pregnant curlers at this year’s Hearts. She’s due this summer as is the Saskatchewan front end of Jessie Hunkin and Kara Thevenot.
Hughes says P.E.I. is going into the championship round under the radar.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Canucks announced Tuesday that defenceman Alex Edler will sign a one-day contract in order to officially retire as a member of the NHL team.
The signing will be part of a celebration of Edler’s career held Oct. 11 when the Canucks host the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Canucks selected Edler, from Ostersund, Sweden, in the third round (91st overall) of the 2004 NHL draft.
He played in 925 career games for the Canucks between the 2006-07 and 2020-21 seasons, ranking fourth in franchise history and first among defencemen.
The 38-year-old leads all Vancouver defencemen with 99 goals, 310 assists and 177 power-play points with the team.
Edler also appeared in 82 career post-season contests with Vancouver and was an integral part of the Canucks’ run to the 2011 Stanley Cup final, putting up 11 points (2-9-11) across 25 games.
“I am humbled and honoured to officially end my career and retire as a member of the Vancouver Canucks,” Edler said in a release. “I consider myself lucky to have started my career with such an outstanding organization, in this amazing city, with the best fans in the NHL. Finishing my NHL career where it all began is something very special for myself and my family.”
Edler played two seasons for Los Angeles in 2021-22 and 2022-23. He did not play in the NHL last season.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
The sixth-ranked Canadian women will face World Cup champion Spain in an international friendly next month.
Third-ranked Spain will host Canada on Oct. 25 at Estadio Francisco de la Hera in Almendralejo.
The game will be the first for the Canadian women since the Paris Olympics, where they lost to Germany in a quarterfinal penalty shootout after coach Bev Priestman was sent home and later suspended for a year by FIFA over her part in Canada’s drone-spying scandal.
In announcing the Spain friendly, Canada Soccer said more information on the interim women’s coaching staff for the October window will come later. Assistant coach Andy Spence took charge of the team in Priestman’s absence at the Olympics.
Spain finished fourth in Paris, beaten 1-0 by Germany in the bronze-medal match.
Canada is winless in three previous meetings (0-2-1) with Spain, most recently losing 1-0 at the Arnold Clark Cup in England in February 2022.
The teams played to a scoreless draw in May 2019 in Logroñés, Spain in a warm-up for the 2019 World Cup. Spain won 1-0 in March 2019 at the Algarve Cup in São João da Venda, Portugal.
Spain is a powerhouse in the women’s game these days.
It won the FIFA U-20 World Cup in 2022 and was runner-up in 2018. And it ousted Canada 2-1 in the round of 16 of the current U-20 tournament earlier this month in Colombia before falling 1-0 to Japan after extra time in the quarterfinal.
Spain won the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2018 and 2022 and has finished on the podium on three other occasions.
FC Barcelona’s Aitana Bonmati (2023) and Alexia Putellas (2021 and ’22) have combined to win the last three Women’s Ballon d’Or awards.
And Barcelona has won three of the last four UEFA Women’s Champions League titles.
“We continue to strive to diversify our opponent pool while maintaining a high level of competition.” Daniel Michelucci, Canada Soccer’s director of national team operations, said in a statement. “We anticipate a thrilling encounter, showcasing two of the world’s top-ranked teams.”
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024
TORONTO – The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced cookie brand Oreo as the team’s helmet sponsor for the upcoming NHL season.
The new helmet will debut Sunday when Toronto opens its 2024-25 pre-season against the Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Arena.
The Oreo logo replaces Canadian restaurant chain Pizza Pizza, which was the Leafs’ helmet sponsor last season.
Previously, social media platform TikTok sponsored Toronto starting in the 2021-22 regular season when the league began allowing teams to sell advertising space on helmets.
The Oreo cookie consists of two chocolate biscuits around a white icing filling and is often dipped in milk.
Fittingly, the Leafs wear the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s “Milk” logo on their jerseys.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
