Curling legend Jones still winning in 2023
The road to a possible record-breaking seventh Scotties Tournament of Hearts championship looks a touch easier for Jennifer Jones.
For Kerri Einarson’s Team Canada, their bid for a fourth consecutive title looks a bit more difficult.
And how about Nova Scotia’s Christina Black? Even a Friday-night playoff seeding loss to Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville can’t take the shine off the plucky Bluenosers.
Jones’ Winnipeg-based Manitoba squad stole four in the second end and held on for a 7-6 victory over Einarson in one of two Page Playoff seeding games at Kamloops’ Sandman Centre. In the other, Northern Ontario beat the Nova Scotians 6-3.
The loss was the first in the tournament for Einarson, who went through the round-robin at 8-0 to finish first in Pool A. The win was the eighth straight for Jones after her fivesome—plus coach Glenn Howard— lost their opening game.
“We put our rocks in really good spots and they missed a couple of runbacks,” said Jones of the big fourth-end score. “(Einarson) had a tough draw to give us one and we got lucky enough it was heavy to give us four.”
Nova Scotia’s previous miracle finish had come in their Page qualifier game, after stealing one in an extra end to shock Tracy Fleury’s Ontario, aka the three-time Canadian champion Team Rachel Homan.
Ontario looked to have the game wrapped up in the extra and needed a somewhat routine short-range raise double. However, the stone jammed, leaving Nova Scotia counting and 7-6 winners.
It was the third straight game in which Nova Scotia had wriggled off the hook in the late stages. Earlier, in one of two tiebreakers, Black had defeated Wild Card 1, skipped by Winnipeg’s Kaitlyn Lawes, by a 7-6 scoreline. Black had forced Lawes to make a tough in-off with her final shot, but the former Jones third came up empty.
On Thursday during the final round-robin game, Nova Scotia stole a point in the 10th end to defeat Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges and qualify for the tiebreakers.
In the other previous Page seeding game, Jones had defeated B.C.’s Clancy Grandy by a 9-4 count.
Some fans (and The Curling News contributors) had questioned a Tournament of Hearts event format that put a 7-1 team (Jones, who has now improved to 9-1) into a pre-playoff sudden-death game scenario.
Team Canada will now play in the sudden-death Page 3-4 game Saturday at 1:00 p.m. PT against Nova Scotia. The loser of that game will be eliminated with the winner moving into Sunday’s semifinal.
Manitoba advances to the Page 1 versus 2 playoff Saturday at 6:00 p.m. against Northern Ontario, with the winner moving directly into Sunday’s 6:00 p.m. final.