Prince Edward Island’s Jamie Newson rink were just one end away from advancing to the championship playoff round at the Canadian Mixed Curling Championship in North Bay Ontario, leading 5-4 coming home without last rock advantage in tonight’s game against Northern Ontario, skipped by Colin Koivula. However, the Northern Ontario rink scored 4 points in the last end, for an 8-5 win. PEI could still have advanced if Nova Scotia’s Brent MacDougall rink lost to winless Wade Kingdon, but the Bluenosers won that game 8-3, sending PEI to the seeding round instead.
Michelle MacIntyre (Brian Doherty photo)
From the CCA, here were the playoff scenarios going into tonight’s final draw:
Pool A
Northwest Territories (Jamie Koe), Québec (Tom Wharry) and Manitoba (Jared Kolomaya) will advance to the Championship Round.
The fourth and final spot in Pool A was up for grabs between New Brunswick (Scott Jones), BC (Wes Craig), Yukon (Bob Smallwood) and Alberta (Glen Hansen).
Pool B
Both Ontario (Chris Gardner) and Saskatchewan (Max Kirkpatrick) advanced to the Championship Round regardless of tonight’s results. They will meet in the final draw tonight for first place in Pool A. [Gardner won 8-5]
Nova Scotia’s Brent MacDougall will advance with a win over winless Wade Kingdon of Nunavut. [MacDougall advanced]
Prince Edward Island (Jamie Newson) and Northern Ontario’s Colin Koivula will meet tonight. The winner will move on to the Championship Round while the loser would be out if Nova Scotia wins. [Koivula moves on, Newson is out]
Fourteen teams (10 provinces plus Northern Ontario, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon), compete in the main draw. They have been seeded and separated into two pools of seven teams (based on their Mixed win-loss records the past three years) and first play a round robin within their respective pools. This season also sees a move from 10 end games to 8 ends.
At the conclusion of the round robin, the top four teams in each pool advance to the championship round, with the teams playing the teams from the opposite pool, carrying forward their win-loss records for only those games involving the advancing teams.
Meanwhile, the bottom three teams in each pool will go to the Seeding Pool, where they will compete against the three teams from the opposite pool. The teams carry forward their win-loss record only from the games involving the other two teams in their round-robin pool. This will determine seedings for the 2016 Canadian Mixed in Toronto.
At the conclusion of the championship round on Friday, two semifinals will take place on Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m. AT, pitting 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3. The two winners then advance to the final Saturday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. while the two losing teams meet in the bronze-medal game at the same time.
In addition, all games throughout the competition are now eight (not 10) ends. Also, no tiebreaker games will be played at the conclusion of either round. Instead, any ties for position will be determined by accumulated pre-game Last-Shot-Draw results.
The winning team will represent Canada at the 2015 World Mixed Curling Championship, Sept. 12-19 at a site to be announced by the World Curling Federation.
For event, team and draw information, visit www.curling.ca/2015mixed-en. Click here for a downloadable copy of the rosters.
Draw scores/results will be immediately available on the Canadian Curling Association’s website, www.curling.ca.
Up-to-date standings can be found here: 2015 Mixed Curling Standings
Photos from the 2015 Canadian Mixed Curling Championship can be found here (Brian Doherty Photography).