McEwen could lose his way to the Brier

Opinion

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This article was published 10/02/2016 (2990 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SELKIRK — There are two kinds of stories in this business: those you have to write and those that write themselves.

The following would very definitely be in the latter category: Mike McEwen loses to Matt Dunstone at the Selkirk Recreation Complex in this Sunday’s final of the Manitoba men’s curling championship.

What’s so automatic about that storyline you ask?

Well, a McEwen loss to Dunstone in Sunday’s final would be an eye-popping sixth loss in a Manitoba men’s final for McEwen since 2010. (He’s also lost a semifinal in that period).

That would make it a pretty compelling story all by itself, although, yeah, it would also be old news in a sense.

The hook is a McEwen loss in the final to Dunstone this year would be old news in a very new — and unprecedented — way.

Dunstone, you see, is the newly crowned Canadian junior champion and his team already has a trip booked for the world junior men’s curling championship in Denmark, March 5-13. Those are the same dates as the Tim Hortons Brier that will be held in Ottawa next month and Dunstone revealed Wednesday he has already committed his squad to play in the world juniors next month, no matter what his squad does here this weekend.

Dunstone is unequivocal on this point: if his team wins Sunday’s Manitoba men’s final, they will decline their invitation to represent Manitoba at the Brier in order to represent Canada instead at the world juniors.

And so, that means if McEwen were to lose his sixth provincial final to Dunstone this weekend, his team would at the same time win their long-awaited first trip to the Brier as the runner-up to Dunstone.

And that, in turn, would make the McEwen foursome the first team in memory ever to play in a Brier without having first won their province.

Unlikely. Maybe. But Dunstone has already beaten McEwen twice on the cash circuit this winter. And the two teams are on a collision course this week, with both teams undefeated through two games and playing in A-side qualifiers this morning.

Plus, this is Mike McEwen at the provincials we’re talking about here. If it can happen, it will.

McEwen just laughed when the Free Press approached him with that prospect. “I know where you’re going with this,” McEwen said with a grin.

“I’m not sure how I’d feel about going to the Brier that way. I guess for a real answer, you’d have to ask me in the moment. I’d still be super-excited to go, but there would be some tinge about losing the final.

“It’s not the way you’d want to go. You’d want to win. But I’m not sure it would matter that much… You really want to write that story, don’t you?”

Like I said — it would write itself. And it would be a page-turner. How about this for the next chapter?

McEwen loses his way to the Brier, but then goes on a tear and wins in Ottawa next month. That would surprise no one — McEwen is easily the best team in Canada never to have played in a Brier, and he’d be a favourite to win no matter how he got there.

And having won the Brier, McEwen would then have also won the right to automatically return to next year’s Brier as Team Canada.

Put it all together, and this McEwen squad could put together a Ferbey-esque run of Brier and world titles in the years to come, without ever having actually won a Manitoba title.

It all raises an interesting question no one’s ever really been asked before — and which, given his unique provincial history, McEwen is in a unique position to answer: is it more important to win the Manitoba provincials or is it more important to go to the Brier?

“I think for me, it’s more important to go to the Brier,” said McEwen. “I want to compete for a national championship. It wouldn’t be ideal to lose a final to get there, but I want to win a Canadian championship.

“And if that’s the way it went down, I’d take it. It wouldn’t keep me up at night.”

Reid Carruthers, who beat McEwen in last year’s Manitoba final, says there’s no shame in whatever path you take to the Brier. “I’ve lost that final before, and it sucks,” Carruthers said Thursday. “But if I lost and was told I could still go to the Brier, it’d still be pretty exciting.”

There is a caveat to all this. Curl Manitoba executive director Craig Baker told me a runner-up to Dunstone in the final this Sunday would not automatically be awarded Manitoba’s Brier berth.

Baker explained there is a scenario where a team that lost the final to Dunstone could theoretically have the same number of losses in the upcoming weekend playoff round as the team that lost Sunday morning’s semifinal.

In that scenario, Baker said Curl Manitoba has decided the loser of the final would have to play the loser of the semifinal in a special tiebreaker game for the Brier berth.

And that would mean a scenario in which McEwen could lose two provincial finals in one year: the final to Dunstone and then the tiebreaker to go to the Brier.

Good Lord, how much disappointment could one curler take? The last word goes to the expert in the subject.

“I’d really like to put your theoretical story to rest,” says McEwen, “and just win the final.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek