Team Canada’s Heather Nedohin squeaked into the playoffs at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts despite losing four of her last five round-robin games at Kingston, Ont.
Nedohin and her Saville Centre rink of Beth Iskiw, Jessica Mair and Laine Peters was able to avoid having to play a tiebreaker early Saturday morning when Saskatchewan’s Jill Shumay (6-5) lost to Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones in Friday’s last draw. The win enabled Jones to become the first team to post a perfect record in the round-robin since Linda Moore went 10-0 at the Canadian women’s curling championship in 1985. Jones also recorded her 100th career Scotties win earlier Friday.
Ontario’s Rachel Homan drew the button with his final stone to edge Nedohin 6-5 Friday night and finish in second place at 10-1 while B.C.’s Kelly Scott was third at 8-3 and Nedohin fourth at 7-4 for the second year in a row.
“We’re a team that rebounds very well,” Nedohin told reporters in Kingston. “You’ve got to handle some hiccups, I guess you could say, along the way. I’d look at our record last year (7-4). I’d say we did pretty well with the losses that we had.”
Nedohin, Jones and Homan were all 6-0 after the first four days of play, but the defending champions suffered a couple of shocking losses in which they blew four-point leads after Manitoba beat Team Canada 8-5 on Wednesday.
First, it was a 5-1 lead after four ends to Saskatchewan, with Shumay stealing a point in four straight ends to take a 7-5 lead coming home. Then Kerry Galusha’s Yukon/Northwest Territories team, which always seems to play its best game of the championship against Team Canada (regardless of the skip or team), rallied from a 6-2 deficit after four ends on Friday afternoon to post a 10-8 victory. Galusha stole the final two points in the 10th end when Nedohin’s attempted come-around tapback wrecked on a guard.
Nedohin will play Scott in the Page Playoff 3-4 game at noon MST. The game is a rematch of last year’s championship final, which Nedohin won 7-6. Nedohin also beat Scott 7-5 for her sixth straight win in the round-robin before losing her momentum.
Manitoba and Ontario will play in the Page 1-2 game at 5 p.m., with the winner advancing straight to Sunday’s 5 p.m. final. The loser will play the winner of the Page 3-4 game in Sunday’s 7 a.m. semifinal. Nedohin defeated Jones in last year’s semifinal.
