By Larry Wood, Tankard Times Editor (CCA)

HALIFAX, March 10 – Winner of 52-and-counting Tim Hortons Brier games over five renewals, Glenn Howard and his team of Richard Hart, Brent Laing and Craig Savill assured Ontario on Wednesday night of playoff activity for the fifth straight year.

Extending its current win skein to nine games at the Metro Centre with an 8-4 conquest of Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton, who skipped the team that derailed Ontario a year ago in Calgary, Howard clinched a berth in the Page One-Two playoff on Friday night.

That game provides an extra playoff life. The winner heads directly to Sunday’s 8 p.m. championship final while the loser drops to the Saturday night (7:30 p.m.) semi-final.

It was a critical day for Howard, who earlier disposed of another possible threat in Brad Gushue of Newfoundland/Labrador. That was a 9-5 thrashing on the morning shift.

Gushue then rebounded to defeat Stoughton 5-3 in the afternoon. It was a duplicate of the result in the same building five years ago when Gushue defeated Stoughton in the final of the 2005 Olympic trials to earn a trip to the Torino Games and a subsequent gold-medal haul.

While Howard was prevailing, Gushue (7-and-2) splitting and Stoughton (5-and-4) plummeting, Alberta’s Kevin Koe won twice and installed himself as a promising bet to face Howard in the Page One-Two.

With each team drawn twice in Thursday’s final round-robin docket of three draws, here’s how the contenders will wrap it up:

Ontario (9-and-0): 3 p.m. Territories (1-8), 7:30 p.m. Alberta (7-2).
Alberta (7-and-2): 10:30 a.m. Territories (1-8), 7:30 p.m. Ontario (9-0).
Newfoundland/Lab. (7-and-2): 10:30 a.m. Northern Ontario (7-and-2), 7:30 p.m. Quebec (5-and-4).
Northern Ontario (7-and-2): 10:30 a.m. Newfoundland/Labrador (7-and-2), 3 p.m. Quebec (5-and-4).
Manitoba (5-and-4): 10:30 a.m. Nova Scotia (2-and-7), 3 p.m. Saskatchewan (4-and-5).
Quebec (5-and-4) 3 p.m. Northern Ontario (7-and-2), 7:30 p.m. Newfoundland/Labrador (7-and-2).

Howard slammed four on the board in the first end Wednesday night against Stoughton and the Manitobans failed to recover, although they did battle back to within a point.

“That was characteristic of that Manitoba team,” said Howard. “They weren’t quite on their game but they keep coming back at you. We were leaking oil for a time there after getting the four but finally we got the pressure back on him.”

Howard said his team will keep playing every game as though it could be the last one.  “We’ll go out and play as well as we possibly can against the Territories and Alberta. Like I’ve been saying all week, we want to win every game. That’s the goal and that hasn’t changed with a 9-and-0 record. We never sit back.”

Moaned Stoughton, “No one’s making many shots so you get your rump kicked. We aren’t putting eight shots together at all.
“It’s one of those days. You get as much out of this game as you put into it so I guess we haven’t put enough into it.”

Third Kevin Park struggled with shooting percentages in the 60s in both games.  “When I don’t make my shots, then Jeff’s shots will be twice as difficult,” he said.

Park added Manitoba has put itself in the same position it was in last year at Calgary, having to hope for two wins on the last day and then advancing from a tiebreaker. The team eventually wound up in the final.

In other Wednesday night matches, Brad Jacobs of Sault Ste. Marie (7-and-2) forged into the top four by edging Rod MacDonald (1-and-8) of Prince Edward Island 7-6 on last rock, Saskatchewan’s Darrell McKee (4-and-5) hammered Jamie Koe (1-and-8) of the Territories 13-4, and New Brunswick’s James Grattan (3-and-6) halted a win famine by upending Quebec’s Serge Reid 7-2.

The loss kept Reid (5-and-4) from moving ahead of Manitoba to a position one game shy of the top four places.