"The ability to recruit abroad, to let us bring a player in, has allowed us to make a stronger team."
Brad Gushue appreciates that Curling Canada’s oft-changing residency rules helped his Newfoundland team win another national championship and, in the process, kept Saskatchewan’s representatives from winning for a 43rd straight year.
Regina hosts the 2024 Canadian men’s curling championship. Wouldn’t it be sweet if the reigning champ let this small, wistful Prairie province finally win another Brier?
“Not if I can help it,” Gushue said with a smile earlier this week during a conference call previewing the world curling championship, slated to start Saturday in Ottawa.
“But if we don’t win I would love to see Saskatchewan win. Second choice, how’s that?”
Gushue was being gracious.
He has won a record five Briers as a skip, plus a world championship and Olympic gold medal. His team was slightly rebuilt this off-season, abiding by those residency rules, when E.J. Harnden, a former Canadian champion from Northern Ontario, was added to the roster.
The same thing happens in women’s curling, where Kerri Einarson’s Manitoba-based team added “free agent” Val Sweeting from outside the province, won four straight Canadian championships and was stung by fans criticizing the rink for winning only a bronze medal at the recent world championship.
There are always especially high expectations for Canadian curlers, even though the upcoming event — officially known as the BKT Tires & OK Tire World Men’s Championship— features Sweden’s Niklas Edin chasing his fifth straight title.
“I guess (Canadians) can continue to expect it, but continuously more times than not over the last little while they’re probably going to be a little disappointed,” said Gushue’s longtime third, Mark Nichols.
“We still put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform well, but if you were to play world championships three weeks in a row you might get three different winners.”
Gushue’s success has been phenomenal, considering he isn’t coming from a curling hotbed in Newfoundland.
When he burst into prominence in the early 2000s, Gushue found it difficult to put together a competitive team from his province’s tiny group of high-performance curlers, to the extent he recruited veteran Russ Howard from Ontario via Nova Scotia to bolster the squad that won the 2006 Winter Olympics.
Before the 2012 Brier in Saskatoon, Gushue reiterated his stance as Curling Canada scrambled to establish residency rules that would be fair while favouring not just the curling powerhouses of Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba to win Briers. Gushue said something similar last week.
“If our goal as a country is to be competitive at the worlds and the Olympics and continue to get stronger, we have to make sure our best players are playing together and forming the best teams,” said Gushue. “To do that we can’t be eliminating teams by region.
“There are some really good curlers from smaller parts of this country that really deserve to be on the top three, top four, top five teams in this country and potentially the world.”
Since 2019, according to Curling Canada rules, all teams vying for provincial championships could consist of four residents of the respective province, or they must have been born in that province, with the allowance of one “free agent” from any other province.
It has allowed for some strange bedfellows, such as Manitoban Matt Dunstone skipping a Saskatchewan rink into the Brier. They didn’t win; Saskatchewan hasn’t had a Brier winner since Rick Folk in 1980.
Gushue’s latest Brier victory evidently allows him to skirt the residency rules next year.
As long as three members of the team return for the 2024 Brier in Regina, the rink will officially be Team Canada, with Gushue and Nichols from St. John’s, Harnden from Sault Ste. Marie and Geoff Walker, the veteran lead, from Edmonton.
“It’s made it easier for us, for sure,” said Gushue. “The ability to recruit abroad, to let us bring a player in, has allowed us to make a stronger team. Whether that’s going to continue, I’m certainly hopeful it will.”
Darrell Davis is an award-winning sports writer who spent 25 years with the Regina Leader-Post. He teaches journalism, has produced six books and written for numerous newspapers and other publications. He also appears regularly on Rawlco Radio.
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