CALGARY, March 12, 2009 (CCA) — Manitoba’s Jeff Stoughton punched his ticket to Friday and Quebec’s Jean-Michel Menard and New Brunswick’s Russ Howard did their own playoff hopes a big favour here at the 2009 Tim Hortons Brier Thursday afternoon.
Stoughton finished his Brier round-robin with a record of 7-4 following a 7-5 win over Saskatchewan’s Joel Jordison.
The victory means Stoughton will play in at least a playoff tiebreaker game on Friday — and could still advance straight to Saturday morning’s 3 vs 4 Page Playoff game depending on the results from Thursday night’s final round-robin draw.
The Manitoba team had lost three of their last four games heading into Thursday, but looked solid in the win over Saskatchewan and another victory earlier in the day over Newfoundland.
“We didn’t change anything,” Stoughton said. “It’s just the fact we’re making more shots. We weren’t stringing shots together and now we are.”
And so too are Quebec and New Brunswick, who both improved to 6-4 with victories Thursday afternoon — 12-8 over PEI and 11-4 over NWT/Yukon respectively.
The final score in the Quebec game was deceptively lopsided. Clinging to a 9-8 lead, Menard was staring at two PEI counters partially buried on the four-foot when he went to throw the last rock of the 10th end.
Menard haired by the centre-guard to double out the two PEI stones and stick around for a three-ender.
Quebec now needs a win Thursday night over Northern Ontario, while New Brunswick needs a win over BC to both also finish 7-4 and force tiebreakers.
In the only other game, Thursday afternoon, Alberta’s Kevin Martin beat Nova Scotia’s Mark Dacey 7-3 to improve his record to 10-0 and run his Brier winning streak to 23 games, dating all the way back to the 2007 Brier.
That ties an all-time Brier record and Martin could break it tonight with a win over Ontario’s Glenn Howard on the last draw of the round-robin. The Ontario-Alberta game will also determine who finishes first in the round-robin and who gets hammer for Friday night’s 1 vs 2 game, which Alberta and Ontario have clinched.
In the only other game on the Thursday night draw, Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue can lock up third place with a win over Saskatchewan.