Sask. edges PEI 8-7 in evening draw.
Suddenly, but not surprisingly, it’s a three-way race at the front of the Tim Hortons Brier preliminary round robin at the John Labatt Centre.
Team Ontario (Photo: Michael Burns Photography)
The front-running favourites — Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario — headed into Wednesday’s penultimate round of draws with identical 6-and-1 records.
The leaders were one game up on Newfoundland/Labrador (5-2) while Saskatchewan (4-3) remained two games in arrears.
Ontario’s Glenn Howard, who is accustomed to reeling off winning streaks at Briers, won his sixth straight on Tuesday night, calling a halt to Manitoba’s six-game unbeaten skein with a methodical 7-4 conquest of the Winnipeg team skipped by Jeff Stoughton.
Howard stole two points in the fourth end for a 4-zip advantage that was never threatened when the 47-year-old Stoughton twice wrecked on guards with his shots. Howard had opened with a deuce the end previously after blanking the first two.
“That was pretty costly,” admitted the Manitoba skipper afterward.
“You missed by a quarter-inch-to-an-inch twice like that and it’s going to cost you. Those were two big points. Four down was really tough. It was one end where we were an inch off here and there and you can’t do that against these good teams.”
Howard was happy with his team’s accelerated performances.
“We played really well in that game and caught Jeff on a couple of bad ones,” he assessed.
“It gets us to six. If Jeff had beaten us he’d get two more wins and two less losses and you start to think there’s no way to catch him. Now it’s conceivable that we have a shot at the One-Two playoff. We get to control our own destiny. You lose two or three and you can’t.”
Howard experienced something new on a sheet of curling ice in the afternoon.
He played seven ends without the hammer and then scored three points with it in the eighth frame to stun Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue 6-1.
“Never in my life have I gone that long without the hammer,” said Howard with a grin. “But that had to be a good thing. You can’t be down too much as long as that’s going on”
In other late-finishing affairs, Saskatchewan’s Steve Laycock won his second of the day, 8-7 over Eddie MacKenzie’s lowly P.E.I. crew (1-6) while Cotter of Vernon posted his second win in seven starts, 7-5 over New Brunswick’s fading James Grattan (2-5).